old drabbles, 2 of 3
old drabbles crossposted from killerbeautiful. here we've got Harry Potter, Labyrinth and Narnia.
HP : Luna/Goyle : RPG Canon (Career Advice) : rated PG ..one of my favorite hp cliches : library fic! and ps yes the thing she gives him does exist. *facepalm*
"I told you nobody would ask you what you were doing here," the airy voice floated down from above him. He looked up; he was sitting, so she was taller. "I never said they'd ask me," he mumbled. "I said they'd talk. And I'm sure I'm right." He was always sure he was right. "Well if they do, you can just ignore it. That's what I do." She sat in a puff of skirt and scarf and robe, the small charms on her earrings winking cheerily, red and green. "Happy Christmas," she said, producing a small package wrapped in blue paper that might once have been parchment; faint script showed through the colouring, script that looked like Charms homework.
He didn't take it at first. "What's this?" He gave her a suspicious look. "It's a Christmas present?" she said, as though concerned he was actually unfamiliar with the concept. "From you?" He still didn't understand. "Well it isn't from the Bloody Baron," she said, her laugh as tinkling and dreamy as the rest of her. With a roll of his eyes he took it, tried to be neat about undoing the tape, then failed and tore the whole wrapper off in one go. "It's.... a... what is it?" Small enough to fit in his palm, he turned the thing over and over, trying to discern a purpose for it.
"Well, I don't rightly know. But the catalogue said it was guaranteed to produce a laugh, which I thought was what you needed for Christmas more than anything else. Here, I think you press this button--" she leaned over so her head almost butted him in the nose, turning the thing over in his hands until she found the button. "There." She pressed it and an ear-splitting noise wrenched through the library. "YODELAY YODELAY YODELAY HEE HOOOOOO!" He wrapped it tightly in his hands to stifle the sound, but it kept coming; three times before it finally shut off. She had the grace to look, if not embarrassed, at least slightly doubtful.
"I didn't think it would be that loud," she admitted. "Well anyway, I thought, if a yodeling pickle won't get him to laugh, then nothing will. But I guess I'll have to try again." She looked so sincere, while Goyle sat holding a plastic pickle that yodeled, for Merlin's sakes. The humour was hard to ignore; hard, and then impossible. He snickered, then had to cover his mouth to stifle a real laugh, while Luna sat by watching him with a serene little smile of her own. "It is rather funny isn't it. A yodeling pickle. I'm glad you like it." Quickly, then, before he had a chance to stop her, she put her hand in his and leaned over to kiss him on the corner of the mouth. "I wasn't going to take my chances with mistletoe-- full of nargles, you know. Happy Christmas, Goyle." She vaulted to her feet and was gone before he could recover, before he could even ask her what she wanted for Christmas in return.
At that moment, Madam Pince appeared at the head of the row. "You," she uttered in the dust-dry tone reserved only for those who make noise in the library, and Goyle suddenly wished Luna had dragged him with her when she left.
Narnia : Peter Pevensie, gen
In later years he came to understand Susan's mindset more than he wanted to admit. She had been quicker to anger with Aslan for sending them away, and quicker to find distractions from the ache which he knew (yes, he knew, of course, he knew her heart sometimes better than his own) gripped her and ate at her from the inside out. Peter had been stauncher in his belief that Aslan had some other purpose for them, something planned besides sending them back to England to live as though Narnia had never happened. And he was ever conscious of being the eldest, the strong one. If he couldn't believe, how could he expect the others to?
A year came and went. And then two. And then four. Peter went to Cambridge and took up law. He studied with a fervor that sometimes frightened him, going for days without sleep or food, desperately thumbing the pages of aging books searching for anything that might set him afire the way a mere breath of Narnian air had done. But nothing came. His dreams were tormented with fragmented memories-- the Beavers, Trumpkin, Caspian, the Witch-- the life he'd lived in Narnia that had been ripped from him by a careless hunting trip. And in the mornings when he woke he was angry, his grief steeped in frustration that twisted his stomach and made him wish (never aloud, he was not so much a fool as to think Aslan was not still listening) that none of it had ever happened.
He would have given anything to wake and find he was back there, back with no chance of ever returning to England. And he truly meant it-- anything, save the lives of his siblings, he would have gladly gambled for the chance to ride bare-headed on a horse that knew his name, and call himself a Narnian once more. And so when it was decided that they would all gather at the holiday, Peter knew he had to go. Aslan could not fail to heed them then, he reasoned. All of them together in one room? At the very least they would have a sign-- he was sure of it as he was sure of his own name.
He called Susan overseas in America. "We're all going, Su," he said gently. "You need to come. It won't be the same without you." Her voice crackled over the line, but he knew the tone. "It very much will, Peter, honestly. I doubt anyone but you will even miss me." He tried to tell her of his conviction that this was their gateway back, but she would hear none of it. She told him she loved him and disconnected before he could wish her well.
He boarded the train with a strange feeling, like excitement weighed down with dread. Edmund kept asking him what was the matter, but he did not know how to answer. When the train lurched and the sound of steel scraping on steel pierced their ears, Peter was less surprised than he ought to have been. It was our gateway, he thought, as he felt the tug behind his heart that called him back. Oh, Susan.
It did not take him long to become content in New Narnia. But sometimes, when he remembered the boy he had been, the man he had been becoming, he thought of Susan. Those were his sleepless nights when he woke consumed with despair, and the feeling that no matter what the others said or felt, the cost of coming home had been too high.
Labyrinth : Jareth, the Junk Lady, gen
It was playing dirty, he knew. It was cheating. But he was the goblin king; he didn't have to play fair.
A handful of jewels was useless to her; a handful of discarded doll heads, however, was almost priceless. Adding to it a few books with the covers torn off, a broken hand mirror and a tarnished silver necklace with the stones chipped out, and he had enough to bargain with.
She eyed him warily as he approached, but when he upended the sack and dumped it at her feet, she fell to with a greedy eye, picking, cataloguing, feeling and sometimes even tasting the items he'd offered.
When she was done, she looked up at him, her look intent and keen. "What'll you be wanting for all this, then, dear?" she cawed.
He smiled, and held up a crystal. As it turned on his finger, the picture inside might have been a peach; but then again, it might have only been a warped reflection of the goblin king's face. "When this breaks," he said softly, one owlish eyebrow peaked above a fathomless blue eye, "I want her-- the one inside it-- to end up here." He tossed another crystal toward her, which she caught nimbly, and squished one eye up against it like looking into a window.
"Oho, so it's like that then," she crowed, her voice half a cackle, half a screech. "You want to keep her real bad now, don'tcha dear?"
Jareth stood, his face imperious, unamused. "Just make it happen," he spat, and turned on his heel without another word.
HP : 'Only Angels', sort of Snape/Hermione-ish but not really : Rated PG written in 2005 for inell's challenge.
hermione walks alone in the house at spinner’s end and reads snape’s books, catalogues snape’s things, tries to assemble snape’s life from the dregs he’s left behind. she tells herself it’s helping harry, this prying into the private and dusty history of a man she never liked, but it still feels like tiptoeing on eggshells. they’re going to crack any second, and every noise in the rickety old place is his foot on the stair, his hand on the knob, about to confront her with silky voice and penetrating eyes, granger, what are you doing in my house, and she will have no answer. she takes a strange enjoyment in learning his little secrets; worn corners of pages, notes and underlines, inkspatters and watermarks that tell without words pay attention here; i did. she remembers the joy he used to take in soliciting her tears, and thinks how funny it is- the strange things he used to enjoy, the strange things she’s enjoying now. every memory of him is painful, because she always wanted to believe it, that he was truly good and that dumbledore had a reason to trust him. by now she doesn’t know if dumbledore had a reason; she doesn’t know if snape is good or bad and knows it wouldn’t matter to him what her opinion was on the subject anyway. when she thinks about it further, she wonders how snape thinks of himself, if he believes he’s good or bad or something in between. she sits alone in the chair she knows was his and draws her knees up to her chin, thumbing the worn velvet where his hand used to rest and watching the dust motes in the air. she thinks if she was snape she wouldn’t even believe in good or evil; she wouldn’t be able to tell the difference anymore. she thinks honestly, and the thought is hardly comfortable, that if she was snape she couldn’t really believe in anything.
Labyrinth : for drabblesmith, "Funicular" : Sarah, gen
once when she was younger sarah had dreamed of being a tightrope walker. they'd been to the circus and she'd been enthralled with the carelessness of the funambulist's turns and tricks, wishing she could be that easy in any area of her life.
it was only when she said the words and turned around to find herself abruptly in another world, another life, that she realized just how easy it was. how simple to walk that fine line between danger and discretion, to laugh in the face of the goblin king [it's a piece of cake, she lied] and hide her trembling fear deep within her heart. how breathless it was to be forever caught between two choices [just fear me, love me, do as i say and i will be your slave], knowing what she had to do yet still believing she could have it all, the aerial bliss and the concrete safety, if she just tried hard enough.
she never realized the flipside of the coin, that with six tiny words she could throw that ease to the winds and lose her balance. she never realized she could choose to fall off.
HP : Lucius/Narcissa : for smuxis long, long ago : rated PG13
she was always the perfect one. it was something she strove for, part of her charm, her allure. at first glance women wanted to kill her (except her older sister, of course, who loved her more staunchly than anyone) and men wanted to own her, a spun glass treasure from the bottom of the sea. her mother always told her how perfect she was, not like her sisters, the elder too dark, the younger too small, and how she was being groomed for a great honour, though she never knew what. when she was a girl she dreamed of being queen of a castle that overlooked the sea, and having subjects and princes to woo her. she didn't know until much later that the princes didn't exist, even when they looked like the real thing.
she knew it was coming before it happened, knew from the first of the parties and the dinners with all the other girls dressed in white and the boys in uncomfortable suits beneath dress robes, and the parents on the sidelines whispering, always talking. the voices fell silent in awe when she walked by that night, and catching her reflection in the mirror she knew her mother was right; she was perfect. from the first time they met on a couch in an alcove in the ballroom at malfoy manor they gathered glances, the two blond heads bent to each other in quiet conversation, the noble profiles in sharp relief against the shadows behind them; the eyes of the well-dressed purebloods always on the lookout for the perfect match fell on them and their owners nodded knowingly. it was decided that night. they were fourteen years old. the next year when school started they were seen together often, putting each other on display, narcissa's coy grin and lucius's satisfied smirk telling the world what was already blatantly obvious. the first time they fucked it was in narcissa's dormitory, curtains pulled shut around her bed and charmed to silence, and it was a good thing too. his body was so pale it nearly glowed, his hair a halo around her face, and she thought she would choke on his beauty, but when he pierced her to the core with that satisfied, enjoying sneer on his face she couldn't help crying out, digging her nails into his back as hard as she could. he really was powerful, she thought dimly over the roaring of blood in her ears; powerful with the sensuous brutality of centuries of conquering malfoys behind him, the kind that took everything you had and made you thank them for it. later she ran her fingers over the little red marks in his skin, already scabbed over, glad in part that at least she'd left a mark on him too. it was only fair, the give and take that kept the balance that still existed between them.
the next day they met in the middle of the charms corridor, her hair down to hide the bruises on her neck, his left as bare as his prefect badge for anyone to comment on. not that anyone watching his possessive hand on her hip or the way she leaned into his kiss would have any doubt of what had gone on between them, but still. it was what was done, and since that was the way it was done, it was the way lucius would do it. there was no pretense of fidelity, then or ever, but narcissa was happy with the bits of him she had. she would have the most important one, after all, the only thing that made him different from all the other smoothly charismatic pureblooded wankers running around the wizarding world. she would have his name, in the end the only thing that mattered. their wedding day was as perfect as everything else, beautifully monotonously perfect with vows said in french and three kinds of cake and the carriage with the malfoy seal on the door to take them to the country manor where they would spend their honeymoon. they even had a year and a half of marital bliss, outings and holidays on the continent and parties at the manor where she was now mistress, before she conceived; though by then it was assumed she would produce a son. when draco was born, narcissa's mother beamed proudly and vortigern malfoy clapped his son on the back like a jockey who'd just ridden the favored horse to victory. he wasn't half-wrong, narcissa thought wryly, cradling their infant son and dismissing a fleeting urge to ask the healer if she could give him back. she looked up at her husband, met his downward gaze that searched, inspected, memorized the picture she and their child made sitting propped amidst white pillows and downy comforters; the birth of the perfect malfoy heir.
after that she became an accessory to his life, taking owls from her sister and others whose faces she didn't know and never saw, not asking questions when she found his clothes stained with blood or dirt, putting draco on display for him once a week to show that their child- no, the malfoy heir, she had to remind herself- was still alive and healthy and perfect. at night she did her wifely duties, never feeling quite as overwhelmed as she had in the past, though she wondered if that were due to her getting used to lucius or if it simply meant her well of giving was running dry. after he fell asleep, his limbs heavy around her, she would turn his arm over and trace the lines of the tattoo he had there. it had a strange stark beauty to its grotesqueness, like malfoy manor, yet it was cold to the touch. in the end she decided the tattoo was like her- impervious to anything from outside it, only affected by what it allowed in. one night she was lying awake and moved to her familiar ritual of retracing the skull and snake, her fingers barely brushing it before it turned red and lucius started awake with a yell of pain. she sat, white and trembling, the covers clutched around her, as he tugged on his clothes, cursing, and left without a word to her. she heard draco cry from the next room and fled to him, pulling her robe tight around her. she laid him down in the huge bed next to her, letting him grip her finger as he snuggled into the covers. she spoke sweet words to him, words of love and tenderness, and smiled as he finally passed into sleep. taking up her wand, she murmured a spell and reached out for draco's tiny right fist, uncurling the fingers into her own much larger ones which were shaking a little bit with cold and fear, and snapping the bone of the pinky finger as easily as a twig. he murmured, but her spell was good and he felt no pain. murmuring another spell she watched as the swollen flesh diminished, healed but not corrected. she smiled satisfiedly. perfect no longer, my son, she thought. now he cannot have you as he had me. he will tell you perfection is a gift... but i know better. it is a curse.
she knew lucius would come home in bloodstained clothes and look at them, the image of everything he hoped for, everything he'd been trained to want. his wife, his heir, his bed in his manor.... he had had everything of her she had to give, even unto the depths of her soul. but draco he would never possess. she had made sure of that, now; at least he had some small legacy of her besides her pale hair and fragile heart. alone in moonlit darkness, narcissa curled herself around her sleeping son and stroked his hair, humming a little lullaby until she, too, was asleep.
Narnia : Eustace/Jill : rated PG
It should have surprised no one that on coming to New Narnia, the first thing Eustace wanted to do was travel. He'd never quite gotten over the thirst for adventure and the open sea that his trip on the Dawn Treader had given him, and was eager to have the chance to explore a world that was totally new.
He was gone a long time-- many months and more his ship traveled on the seas of New Narnia, and every chance he got he sent a letter back to the palace where his friends and family waited. It was not the same, he knew; he was missing much in the way of events, though they had sworn to put off Lucy and Caspian's marriage until he returned in the fall. Sometimes Eustace thought if it were not for that he could stay on that ship forever, with nothing before him but the horizon, waters uncharted and wonders unseen.
But still, he went back. He must, he knew; and furthermore a part of him wanted to. It had been lonely at times, when storms tossed his ship about like a toy and he wondered if he died, what would he regret leaving undone? There were too many answers, or not enough; he could never decide, and was always grateful when the storms passed and he was spared to live another day.
He sailed into the city on an autumn day with a strong westerly wind at his back, barely waiting for the gangplank to go down before jogging down it like an eager boy. He was haggling with a stableboy over a mount to take him up to the palace when something hit him square in the back (it was soft, and when he turned he saw it had been an apple core) and he shielded his eyes with a hand, a faint frown creasing his brow.
"Welcome home, stranger." The voice was too familiar, the face even more so. Intelligent eyes in a pale face, a long blond braid trailing from beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat, and when she smiled her mouthful of crooked teeth at him, Eustace knew he was home. He caught her into a hug without another word, not caring how proper it was or who saw them there. "By Aslan, I've missed you," he murmured against her hair; and then finally she hugged him back, her arms as strong around his middle as ever.
He found he was more than loath to let her go, having craved this comfortable companionship for so many months, and let his forehead drop to her shoulder, still holding her. "Eustace," she said in that tone, that well-known and suddenly well-loved tone of bemused endurance. "I'm glad to see you too, you great fool. Now let me go." He did, straightening and preparing to apologize; but before he could pull away entirely, she'd caught his hand in hers, which had the desired effect of keeping his eyes on hers. "You're staying this time, right?" she asked, her voice going up at the end in a way he was sure she must hate. He wanted to hug her again, but instead just gave her a slow smile and a nod. "Yes," he said, squeezing her hand lightly in his, "staying."
HP : Luna/Goyle : RPG Canon (Career Advice) : rated PG ..one of my favorite hp cliches : library fic! and ps yes the thing she gives him does exist. *facepalm*
"I told you nobody would ask you what you were doing here," the airy voice floated down from above him. He looked up; he was sitting, so she was taller. "I never said they'd ask me," he mumbled. "I said they'd talk. And I'm sure I'm right." He was always sure he was right. "Well if they do, you can just ignore it. That's what I do." She sat in a puff of skirt and scarf and robe, the small charms on her earrings winking cheerily, red and green. "Happy Christmas," she said, producing a small package wrapped in blue paper that might once have been parchment; faint script showed through the colouring, script that looked like Charms homework.
He didn't take it at first. "What's this?" He gave her a suspicious look. "It's a Christmas present?" she said, as though concerned he was actually unfamiliar with the concept. "From you?" He still didn't understand. "Well it isn't from the Bloody Baron," she said, her laugh as tinkling and dreamy as the rest of her. With a roll of his eyes he took it, tried to be neat about undoing the tape, then failed and tore the whole wrapper off in one go. "It's.... a... what is it?" Small enough to fit in his palm, he turned the thing over and over, trying to discern a purpose for it.
"Well, I don't rightly know. But the catalogue said it was guaranteed to produce a laugh, which I thought was what you needed for Christmas more than anything else. Here, I think you press this button--" she leaned over so her head almost butted him in the nose, turning the thing over in his hands until she found the button. "There." She pressed it and an ear-splitting noise wrenched through the library. "YODELAY YODELAY YODELAY HEE HOOOOOO!" He wrapped it tightly in his hands to stifle the sound, but it kept coming; three times before it finally shut off. She had the grace to look, if not embarrassed, at least slightly doubtful.
"I didn't think it would be that loud," she admitted. "Well anyway, I thought, if a yodeling pickle won't get him to laugh, then nothing will. But I guess I'll have to try again." She looked so sincere, while Goyle sat holding a plastic pickle that yodeled, for Merlin's sakes. The humour was hard to ignore; hard, and then impossible. He snickered, then had to cover his mouth to stifle a real laugh, while Luna sat by watching him with a serene little smile of her own. "It is rather funny isn't it. A yodeling pickle. I'm glad you like it." Quickly, then, before he had a chance to stop her, she put her hand in his and leaned over to kiss him on the corner of the mouth. "I wasn't going to take my chances with mistletoe-- full of nargles, you know. Happy Christmas, Goyle." She vaulted to her feet and was gone before he could recover, before he could even ask her what she wanted for Christmas in return.
At that moment, Madam Pince appeared at the head of the row. "You," she uttered in the dust-dry tone reserved only for those who make noise in the library, and Goyle suddenly wished Luna had dragged him with her when she left.
Narnia : Peter Pevensie, gen
In later years he came to understand Susan's mindset more than he wanted to admit. She had been quicker to anger with Aslan for sending them away, and quicker to find distractions from the ache which he knew (yes, he knew, of course, he knew her heart sometimes better than his own) gripped her and ate at her from the inside out. Peter had been stauncher in his belief that Aslan had some other purpose for them, something planned besides sending them back to England to live as though Narnia had never happened. And he was ever conscious of being the eldest, the strong one. If he couldn't believe, how could he expect the others to?
A year came and went. And then two. And then four. Peter went to Cambridge and took up law. He studied with a fervor that sometimes frightened him, going for days without sleep or food, desperately thumbing the pages of aging books searching for anything that might set him afire the way a mere breath of Narnian air had done. But nothing came. His dreams were tormented with fragmented memories-- the Beavers, Trumpkin, Caspian, the Witch-- the life he'd lived in Narnia that had been ripped from him by a careless hunting trip. And in the mornings when he woke he was angry, his grief steeped in frustration that twisted his stomach and made him wish (never aloud, he was not so much a fool as to think Aslan was not still listening) that none of it had ever happened.
He would have given anything to wake and find he was back there, back with no chance of ever returning to England. And he truly meant it-- anything, save the lives of his siblings, he would have gladly gambled for the chance to ride bare-headed on a horse that knew his name, and call himself a Narnian once more. And so when it was decided that they would all gather at the holiday, Peter knew he had to go. Aslan could not fail to heed them then, he reasoned. All of them together in one room? At the very least they would have a sign-- he was sure of it as he was sure of his own name.
He called Susan overseas in America. "We're all going, Su," he said gently. "You need to come. It won't be the same without you." Her voice crackled over the line, but he knew the tone. "It very much will, Peter, honestly. I doubt anyone but you will even miss me." He tried to tell her of his conviction that this was their gateway back, but she would hear none of it. She told him she loved him and disconnected before he could wish her well.
He boarded the train with a strange feeling, like excitement weighed down with dread. Edmund kept asking him what was the matter, but he did not know how to answer. When the train lurched and the sound of steel scraping on steel pierced their ears, Peter was less surprised than he ought to have been. It was our gateway, he thought, as he felt the tug behind his heart that called him back. Oh, Susan.
It did not take him long to become content in New Narnia. But sometimes, when he remembered the boy he had been, the man he had been becoming, he thought of Susan. Those were his sleepless nights when he woke consumed with despair, and the feeling that no matter what the others said or felt, the cost of coming home had been too high.
Labyrinth : Jareth, the Junk Lady, gen
It was playing dirty, he knew. It was cheating. But he was the goblin king; he didn't have to play fair.
A handful of jewels was useless to her; a handful of discarded doll heads, however, was almost priceless. Adding to it a few books with the covers torn off, a broken hand mirror and a tarnished silver necklace with the stones chipped out, and he had enough to bargain with.
She eyed him warily as he approached, but when he upended the sack and dumped it at her feet, she fell to with a greedy eye, picking, cataloguing, feeling and sometimes even tasting the items he'd offered.
When she was done, she looked up at him, her look intent and keen. "What'll you be wanting for all this, then, dear?" she cawed.
He smiled, and held up a crystal. As it turned on his finger, the picture inside might have been a peach; but then again, it might have only been a warped reflection of the goblin king's face. "When this breaks," he said softly, one owlish eyebrow peaked above a fathomless blue eye, "I want her-- the one inside it-- to end up here." He tossed another crystal toward her, which she caught nimbly, and squished one eye up against it like looking into a window.
"Oho, so it's like that then," she crowed, her voice half a cackle, half a screech. "You want to keep her real bad now, don'tcha dear?"
Jareth stood, his face imperious, unamused. "Just make it happen," he spat, and turned on his heel without another word.
HP : 'Only Angels', sort of Snape/Hermione-ish but not really : Rated PG written in 2005 for inell's challenge.
hermione walks alone in the house at spinner’s end and reads snape’s books, catalogues snape’s things, tries to assemble snape’s life from the dregs he’s left behind. she tells herself it’s helping harry, this prying into the private and dusty history of a man she never liked, but it still feels like tiptoeing on eggshells. they’re going to crack any second, and every noise in the rickety old place is his foot on the stair, his hand on the knob, about to confront her with silky voice and penetrating eyes, granger, what are you doing in my house, and she will have no answer. she takes a strange enjoyment in learning his little secrets; worn corners of pages, notes and underlines, inkspatters and watermarks that tell without words pay attention here; i did. she remembers the joy he used to take in soliciting her tears, and thinks how funny it is- the strange things he used to enjoy, the strange things she’s enjoying now. every memory of him is painful, because she always wanted to believe it, that he was truly good and that dumbledore had a reason to trust him. by now she doesn’t know if dumbledore had a reason; she doesn’t know if snape is good or bad and knows it wouldn’t matter to him what her opinion was on the subject anyway. when she thinks about it further, she wonders how snape thinks of himself, if he believes he’s good or bad or something in between. she sits alone in the chair she knows was his and draws her knees up to her chin, thumbing the worn velvet where his hand used to rest and watching the dust motes in the air. she thinks if she was snape she wouldn’t even believe in good or evil; she wouldn’t be able to tell the difference anymore. she thinks honestly, and the thought is hardly comfortable, that if she was snape she couldn’t really believe in anything.
Labyrinth : for drabblesmith, "Funicular" : Sarah, gen
once when she was younger sarah had dreamed of being a tightrope walker. they'd been to the circus and she'd been enthralled with the carelessness of the funambulist's turns and tricks, wishing she could be that easy in any area of her life.
it was only when she said the words and turned around to find herself abruptly in another world, another life, that she realized just how easy it was. how simple to walk that fine line between danger and discretion, to laugh in the face of the goblin king [it's a piece of cake, she lied] and hide her trembling fear deep within her heart. how breathless it was to be forever caught between two choices [just fear me, love me, do as i say and i will be your slave], knowing what she had to do yet still believing she could have it all, the aerial bliss and the concrete safety, if she just tried hard enough.
she never realized the flipside of the coin, that with six tiny words she could throw that ease to the winds and lose her balance. she never realized she could choose to fall off.
HP : Lucius/Narcissa : for smuxis long, long ago : rated PG13
she was always the perfect one. it was something she strove for, part of her charm, her allure. at first glance women wanted to kill her (except her older sister, of course, who loved her more staunchly than anyone) and men wanted to own her, a spun glass treasure from the bottom of the sea. her mother always told her how perfect she was, not like her sisters, the elder too dark, the younger too small, and how she was being groomed for a great honour, though she never knew what. when she was a girl she dreamed of being queen of a castle that overlooked the sea, and having subjects and princes to woo her. she didn't know until much later that the princes didn't exist, even when they looked like the real thing.
she knew it was coming before it happened, knew from the first of the parties and the dinners with all the other girls dressed in white and the boys in uncomfortable suits beneath dress robes, and the parents on the sidelines whispering, always talking. the voices fell silent in awe when she walked by that night, and catching her reflection in the mirror she knew her mother was right; she was perfect. from the first time they met on a couch in an alcove in the ballroom at malfoy manor they gathered glances, the two blond heads bent to each other in quiet conversation, the noble profiles in sharp relief against the shadows behind them; the eyes of the well-dressed purebloods always on the lookout for the perfect match fell on them and their owners nodded knowingly. it was decided that night. they were fourteen years old. the next year when school started they were seen together often, putting each other on display, narcissa's coy grin and lucius's satisfied smirk telling the world what was already blatantly obvious. the first time they fucked it was in narcissa's dormitory, curtains pulled shut around her bed and charmed to silence, and it was a good thing too. his body was so pale it nearly glowed, his hair a halo around her face, and she thought she would choke on his beauty, but when he pierced her to the core with that satisfied, enjoying sneer on his face she couldn't help crying out, digging her nails into his back as hard as she could. he really was powerful, she thought dimly over the roaring of blood in her ears; powerful with the sensuous brutality of centuries of conquering malfoys behind him, the kind that took everything you had and made you thank them for it. later she ran her fingers over the little red marks in his skin, already scabbed over, glad in part that at least she'd left a mark on him too. it was only fair, the give and take that kept the balance that still existed between them.
the next day they met in the middle of the charms corridor, her hair down to hide the bruises on her neck, his left as bare as his prefect badge for anyone to comment on. not that anyone watching his possessive hand on her hip or the way she leaned into his kiss would have any doubt of what had gone on between them, but still. it was what was done, and since that was the way it was done, it was the way lucius would do it. there was no pretense of fidelity, then or ever, but narcissa was happy with the bits of him she had. she would have the most important one, after all, the only thing that made him different from all the other smoothly charismatic pureblooded wankers running around the wizarding world. she would have his name, in the end the only thing that mattered. their wedding day was as perfect as everything else, beautifully monotonously perfect with vows said in french and three kinds of cake and the carriage with the malfoy seal on the door to take them to the country manor where they would spend their honeymoon. they even had a year and a half of marital bliss, outings and holidays on the continent and parties at the manor where she was now mistress, before she conceived; though by then it was assumed she would produce a son. when draco was born, narcissa's mother beamed proudly and vortigern malfoy clapped his son on the back like a jockey who'd just ridden the favored horse to victory. he wasn't half-wrong, narcissa thought wryly, cradling their infant son and dismissing a fleeting urge to ask the healer if she could give him back. she looked up at her husband, met his downward gaze that searched, inspected, memorized the picture she and their child made sitting propped amidst white pillows and downy comforters; the birth of the perfect malfoy heir.
after that she became an accessory to his life, taking owls from her sister and others whose faces she didn't know and never saw, not asking questions when she found his clothes stained with blood or dirt, putting draco on display for him once a week to show that their child- no, the malfoy heir, she had to remind herself- was still alive and healthy and perfect. at night she did her wifely duties, never feeling quite as overwhelmed as she had in the past, though she wondered if that were due to her getting used to lucius or if it simply meant her well of giving was running dry. after he fell asleep, his limbs heavy around her, she would turn his arm over and trace the lines of the tattoo he had there. it had a strange stark beauty to its grotesqueness, like malfoy manor, yet it was cold to the touch. in the end she decided the tattoo was like her- impervious to anything from outside it, only affected by what it allowed in. one night she was lying awake and moved to her familiar ritual of retracing the skull and snake, her fingers barely brushing it before it turned red and lucius started awake with a yell of pain. she sat, white and trembling, the covers clutched around her, as he tugged on his clothes, cursing, and left without a word to her. she heard draco cry from the next room and fled to him, pulling her robe tight around her. she laid him down in the huge bed next to her, letting him grip her finger as he snuggled into the covers. she spoke sweet words to him, words of love and tenderness, and smiled as he finally passed into sleep. taking up her wand, she murmured a spell and reached out for draco's tiny right fist, uncurling the fingers into her own much larger ones which were shaking a little bit with cold and fear, and snapping the bone of the pinky finger as easily as a twig. he murmured, but her spell was good and he felt no pain. murmuring another spell she watched as the swollen flesh diminished, healed but not corrected. she smiled satisfiedly. perfect no longer, my son, she thought. now he cannot have you as he had me. he will tell you perfection is a gift... but i know better. it is a curse.
she knew lucius would come home in bloodstained clothes and look at them, the image of everything he hoped for, everything he'd been trained to want. his wife, his heir, his bed in his manor.... he had had everything of her she had to give, even unto the depths of her soul. but draco he would never possess. she had made sure of that, now; at least he had some small legacy of her besides her pale hair and fragile heart. alone in moonlit darkness, narcissa curled herself around her sleeping son and stroked his hair, humming a little lullaby until she, too, was asleep.
Narnia : Eustace/Jill : rated PG
It should have surprised no one that on coming to New Narnia, the first thing Eustace wanted to do was travel. He'd never quite gotten over the thirst for adventure and the open sea that his trip on the Dawn Treader had given him, and was eager to have the chance to explore a world that was totally new.
He was gone a long time-- many months and more his ship traveled on the seas of New Narnia, and every chance he got he sent a letter back to the palace where his friends and family waited. It was not the same, he knew; he was missing much in the way of events, though they had sworn to put off Lucy and Caspian's marriage until he returned in the fall. Sometimes Eustace thought if it were not for that he could stay on that ship forever, with nothing before him but the horizon, waters uncharted and wonders unseen.
But still, he went back. He must, he knew; and furthermore a part of him wanted to. It had been lonely at times, when storms tossed his ship about like a toy and he wondered if he died, what would he regret leaving undone? There were too many answers, or not enough; he could never decide, and was always grateful when the storms passed and he was spared to live another day.
He sailed into the city on an autumn day with a strong westerly wind at his back, barely waiting for the gangplank to go down before jogging down it like an eager boy. He was haggling with a stableboy over a mount to take him up to the palace when something hit him square in the back (it was soft, and when he turned he saw it had been an apple core) and he shielded his eyes with a hand, a faint frown creasing his brow.
"Welcome home, stranger." The voice was too familiar, the face even more so. Intelligent eyes in a pale face, a long blond braid trailing from beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat, and when she smiled her mouthful of crooked teeth at him, Eustace knew he was home. He caught her into a hug without another word, not caring how proper it was or who saw them there. "By Aslan, I've missed you," he murmured against her hair; and then finally she hugged him back, her arms as strong around his middle as ever.
He found he was more than loath to let her go, having craved this comfortable companionship for so many months, and let his forehead drop to her shoulder, still holding her. "Eustace," she said in that tone, that well-known and suddenly well-loved tone of bemused endurance. "I'm glad to see you too, you great fool. Now let me go." He did, straightening and preparing to apologize; but before he could pull away entirely, she'd caught his hand in hers, which had the desired effect of keeping his eyes on hers. "You're staying this time, right?" she asked, her voice going up at the end in a way he was sure she must hate. He wanted to hug her again, but instead just gave her a slow smile and a nod. "Yes," he said, squeezing her hand lightly in his, "staying."