RP: Bye, Bye Beautiful
Characters: Rodolphus Lestrange
Date: May 3rd 2000
Location: Landing Point of Omaha Beach, France
Status/Warning: Private
Summary: It's hard not to honor the dead when they can talk back.
Completion: Complete
The rain and waves had called him. Beneath a steel gray sky, Rodolphus had donned his coat and left the dingy little bar and gone over the sloughing dunes and rusting embankments to the very edge of the sea. He blinked against the chilly spray, trying to stare to the opposite shore.
"Don't you have anything to say?" He asked the air. "You used to love it here. So much blood spilled. You loved the irony of their wars."
Her voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, uncharacteristically demure. 'You've strayed, dearest. You took the Dark Lord's missions too much to heart. And now you can't even miss me.'
The dead were supposed to stay dead, he wanted to say. Missing was for someone's voice whom you couldn't remember the exact sound of, or the nuance of color in their eyes. Missing was not somehow feeling they were still by you as you slept, or close by as you walked. There were days Rodolphus swore he'd held a finger up to test the wind and silenced Bella with a 'shhh' against her lips. How could he miss her when she had never gone at all?
"You never wanted to believe absence made the heart grow fonder." Rod replied, not bothering to retreat from a larger wave as it tempered against the shore, sloshing over his worn leather boots in dull foam and sea-lather. "Not even when you were alive."
'It was my duty to support you. Just as it is our duty to obey the Dark Lord and see the triumph of His Will. And don't you start with that whole Mark business. Mine won't ever fade.'
A derersive chuckle passed Rod's lips, lost to the storm and rain. There was no lightning or thunder, but the sea was enough. Each wave had a unique destruction: a hiss, a growl, a corraling crash like some sort of distorted orchestra hit, every instruament crying out for a single, deafening beat. There were a million things he could have said to that, about there being nothing noble or proud about death, about how in the end they had no duty to anyone but themselves and if he was a better husband, he'd have not returned to Voldemort that night, but he couldn't leave Rabastan. He couldn't. Just like he couldn't dally now that they were so close.
"Goodbye, beautiful." Rodolphus reached out as though to pull at a lock of curly hair and for a moment could have sworn he was actually holding something more than air in his hands. Shaking it off as the feel of the gloves he wore, a foot dug deep into the sand, pivoted, and began carrying him back over the embankment.
Date: May 3rd 2000
Location: Landing Point of Omaha Beach, France
Status/Warning: Private
Summary: It's hard not to honor the dead when they can talk back.
Completion: Complete
The rain and waves had called him. Beneath a steel gray sky, Rodolphus had donned his coat and left the dingy little bar and gone over the sloughing dunes and rusting embankments to the very edge of the sea. He blinked against the chilly spray, trying to stare to the opposite shore.
"Don't you have anything to say?" He asked the air. "You used to love it here. So much blood spilled. You loved the irony of their wars."
Her voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, uncharacteristically demure. 'You've strayed, dearest. You took the Dark Lord's missions too much to heart. And now you can't even miss me.'
The dead were supposed to stay dead, he wanted to say. Missing was for someone's voice whom you couldn't remember the exact sound of, or the nuance of color in their eyes. Missing was not somehow feeling they were still by you as you slept, or close by as you walked. There were days Rodolphus swore he'd held a finger up to test the wind and silenced Bella with a 'shhh' against her lips. How could he miss her when she had never gone at all?
"You never wanted to believe absence made the heart grow fonder." Rod replied, not bothering to retreat from a larger wave as it tempered against the shore, sloshing over his worn leather boots in dull foam and sea-lather. "Not even when you were alive."
'It was my duty to support you. Just as it is our duty to obey the Dark Lord and see the triumph of His Will. And don't you start with that whole Mark business. Mine won't ever fade.'
A derersive chuckle passed Rod's lips, lost to the storm and rain. There was no lightning or thunder, but the sea was enough. Each wave had a unique destruction: a hiss, a growl, a corraling crash like some sort of distorted orchestra hit, every instruament crying out for a single, deafening beat. There were a million things he could have said to that, about there being nothing noble or proud about death, about how in the end they had no duty to anyone but themselves and if he was a better husband, he'd have not returned to Voldemort that night, but he couldn't leave Rabastan. He couldn't. Just like he couldn't dally now that they were so close.
"Goodbye, beautiful." Rodolphus reached out as though to pull at a lock of curly hair and for a moment could have sworn he was actually holding something more than air in his hands. Shaking it off as the feel of the gloves he wore, a foot dug deep into the sand, pivoted, and began carrying him back over the embankment.