Commentary: "Nothing That's Worth Seeing"
Aug. 21st, 2006 08:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stephanometraDid you expect it all to stop
At the wave of your hand?
Like the sun's just gonna drop
If it's night you demand
Well, in the dark we're just air
So the house might dissolve.
But once we're gone,
Who's gonna care
If we were ever here at all?
Well, summer's gonna come
It's gonna cloud our eyes again.
No need to focus when there's nothing that's worth seeing.
So we trade liquor for blood
In an attempt to tip the scales;
I think you lost what you loved in that mess of details.
They seemed so important at the time,
But now you can't even recall
Any names, faces, or lines.
It's more the feeling of it all.
Well, winter's gonna end
I'm gonna clean these veins again.
So close to dying that I finally can start living.
. . .
So this story was my second request for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
reversathon, which I took after I had to default on my first one owing the the first one being something I could never in three million years write.
Basically I fell in love with the concept as soon as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fluffyllama sent me the prompt.
I wibbled a huge amount about where to set this story; I got 400 words into a "Sirius runs into Bella when the Order foils a raid on someone's house, they have angsty sex and Remus watches which is why Remus doesn't trust Sirius omfg!" but then decided it was stupid and unworkable, even after removing Remus from the picture because I couldn't figure out a reason why he'd just watch and not, y'know, fire off a curse or two at Bella because she's apparently attacking Sirius. I also considered doing the channish "day Sirius leaves home" thing, which had the advantage of being more canon-compliant, but also wasn't really the story I wanted to tell because it left out the crucial element of Regulus angst, which I don't really feel like any story about Sirius is complete without. (I'm such an angstwhore.)
The cemetery was my original idea, and I was leery of it because I was afraid that it would come out all cliche and ridiculous and Gothy, but since it was the story I really wanted to tell, I couldn't really abandon it. Stories get into my brain like that sometimes; it's really irritating.
The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black buries its dead in a tiny churchyard in Islington, expanded to cover the better part of an acre and cloaked from Muggle eyes by centuries' worth of wards and charms. The protections are so strong that even to magical eyes, the air shimmers and glows like something out of a fairy story. I refuse either to confirm or deny that I had Neverwhere on the brain while writing that sentence.
Standing in the shadow of the chapel, flicking a cigarette and kicking the gravelly soil around with the toe of his shoe, Sirius wonders why the hell they bothered. Why does he smoke?! Stupid fanon. I don't smoke. I don't even like smoking; I've only done it once. But Sirius apparently smokes like a chimney whenever he's stressed out. Fucked if I know why I always see him that way in my head.
He idly trails his fingers over the wrought-iron fence, the black perfection of its surface marred by rust and neglect. The haphazard rows of headstones and monuments beyond the fence seem out of place and sad, as if the big, unnaturally-shaped pieces of granite and marble just showed up while nobody was looking and stay there, year in and year out and in various states of disrepair, ruining a perfectly good grassy field with their purposeful disorder. It's beautiful and ugly all at once, the Baroque statues warring for dominance with the tidy new stones while lilies mourn in their shadows. FYI:pojypojy's art perfectly got the fence as I saw it in my head. I want her to draw more stuffs from this story because it's blatantly obvious that she actually managed to crawl into my head. Brain twins wot?
Sirius hates it, hates that it's as fascinating as it is repulsive. Hates that he can't decide whether he should push open the creaking, ornate gates or Apparate away as fast as his magic can carry him. At the risk of sounding like a total narcissist, I heart that turn of phrase.
Hates the two newly-turned graves that compelled him to come here in the first place. ANGST!
He smokes his fag all the way down to the filter and tosses it to the ground, raising a foot to stamp out the still-burning ember.
The pointed toe of an elegant black boot beats him to it, grinding the butt into the rocky dirt. "Muggle cigarettes, Sirius? How quaint." Oh, Bella. You are such a bitch. ♥
He glowers at her over his shoulder. "Fuck off, Lestrange."
"Those things are terrible for you, you know," Bellatrix continues amiably, as if she hadn't heard his comment. As if she cared.
"So is throwing around Cruciatus like it's a Cheering Charm." Love that one, too. He turns around, leaning against the fence and crossing his arms across his chest. "What do you want? The blood wards here still know me, so it's not like you can do me any damage." I like this idea much more than I should. But I know if I were the matriarch of an ancient aristocratic family given to Dark magic and insanity, I'd make sure there were some neutral-ground sorts of places where my children couldn't murder one another.
She looks at him, gaze level and just short of disinterested. "Why do you perpetually think everything has to be about you?"
"General narcissism and long experience. Answer the question." Come on, Padfoot, you know that's not the way she operates. Why waste your breath?
"Of the two of us, I'm the only one with any genuine cause to be here at all. It's not your family buried here." She narrows her eyes calculatingly. "Or is it? Having second thoughts, are we?"
"Don't be stupid." She's anything but, dollface.
"I wouldn't dream of it," she says, stepping forward and tangling her fingers in the fence's elaborate tracery of scrollwork. "Such a tragedy, really."
Sirius smiles mirthlessly, recognizing the game she's playing. "Oh, I'm sure. That's the official line, is it? Did the old bat buy your crocodile tears, Bella? Because I don't." I've never seen a Regulus'-funeral!fic from Bella's point of view, or even Walburga's for that matter. Some must exist, but I've never seen it.
"You think I'm pleased he died a traitor?" Bellatrix challenges, her voice hard.
He snorts. "No, but I expect you to be just the least bit upset that he died at all." Asking too much there, sweetheart.
"He knew what he was doing when he betrayed the Dark Lord!"
"Regulus never betrayed anyone, you mad bitch. He just came to his senses." I wish I had any sort of confidence that canon!Sirius actually felt this way. :( I feel like Fab; I want Sirius to be so much nicer than he in actuality is. He fumbles in his pocket for his fags, shaking another one out, lighting it, and taking a long drag. "But don't let that interfere with your self-righteous zealotry." Sirius blows smoke in her face.
She curls her lip in distaste. "How can you stand that rubbish?" You're such a maiden aunt, Bella-love.
"I don't know." Another puff of smoke blows her way. "How can you stand to lick the arse of the whoreson who killed my brother?" ZIIIIING!
"How dare you!" Her fingers twitch at her side, clearly wishing for the use of her wand. I'm not sure I like this sentence anymore, especially seeing as how in my conception of the wards, she could in fact still use her wand, just not to harm Sirius. Which is what she really wants to do, of course, so the entire point is moot and oh shit I just made my head hurt.
"How dare I?" He drops his cigarette at her feet, ignoring the automatic answering itch in his own wand hand and clenching his fingers into a white-knuckled fist instead. "If not for that witless lickspittle you married, none of us would be tied up in this mess at all!" Cindy didn't like the "witless lickspittle" bit. I whined at her and kept it anyhow because I liked it and Sazzle said it was jawesome and really, if you can't use words like that in fic, when can you use them?
Bellatrix blinks at him for a second, and then she bursts out laughing. "This is my fault, is it? Oh, you poor innocent." She drops her voice, her tone becoming dark and knowing. "You could never hold a candle to Rodolphus, cousin. He understands family. Duty. His place in the world." You're not fooling anyone, dear heart. You know that, right?
"I haven't any family," Sirius snaps, half-raising his fist to strike her before clamping harshly down on his temper, because he knows that she's not worth it. "Not as far as you and yours are concerned." Methinks the lad doth protest too much!
"And what of them?" she asks, gesturing towards the two new graves and affecting an expression of false innocence, one that is entirely spoiled by the gleeful malice she can't quite hide.
He mirrors her expression and her tone. "You might have noticed that they're dead, seeing as how your aunt buried them yesterday. Tell me, how is she taking the end of her line? Not well, I'd wager, especially since you're barren as the Jerusalem desert, and Cissy will get no good from a ponce like Lucius Malfoy." I just can't keep from picking on Lucius. It's a sickness. He sweeps his eyes over the fading, serenely awful cemetery. "Take a long look, Bella. This is the only future left for that family you talk so much about." This bit was longer orginally, and was much more pretentious and stilted. I miss the old lines regardless.
Bellatrix looks at him with disgust. "How convenient for you, Sirius, that you have me to condemn." Well, he doesn't know how to take responsibility for himself, so he'd probably be blaming you even if it weren't, y'know, actually your fault.
"You so badly wanted a chance to toady up to that madman," Sirius sneers, "and you dragged Regulus down with you. Christ, he was just a kid!"
"It was never meant for him, you stupid boy. It should have been you." Oh, the condescension. I love you, Bella.
"What, you'd rather I was the one underground? I'm in shock, Bella, truly I am." Gah, it's so too bad they hate each others' guts, because they're so fucking perfect together. Am I going to hell for thinking that?
"You wouldn't have died at all," she counters.
Sirius goes very still. "You had better not be saying what I think you're saying."
"Spare me," she says. "As if I would insult the Dark Lord by insinuating that He might have you."
A sardonic smile. "I think that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."
"Then you're clearly not listening." OH, IT'S ON. Her glare radiates contempt. "You know that it didn't have to be this way."
"I think I just said that, actually." Snarky, snarky bastard.
"Right, when you blamed me for your brother's broken promises and your father's broken heart. Anything to avoid taking the slightest bit of responsibility for yourself."
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
"Did I stutter?" Five minutes ago it was like an Elk's Lodge meeting up in this motherfucker, and now it's as quiet as a church!
He snorts. "You can't seriously be trying to pin any of this on me." Sirius spreads his hands in careless indication of the scenery behind him.
"Oh, of course not, because Sirius Black is a law unto himself, free from such mundane concerns as simple cause and effect." She cocks her head to one side. "Tell me, what exactly did you expect would happen after your Christmastime (I meta'd about this in thereversathon comment thread) tantrum? What did you think the rest of us would do after you walked out?"
"I certainly never thought you'd begin grooming a child to become a fucking Death Eater!" That's because you're an idiot, Sirius.
"Regulus ceased to be a child the moment you packed your trunk!"
"Because people like you and that horrible old woman wouldn't let him stay one!" he yells. I wonder when the last time he actually called her "Mother" (without meaning it as an insult) was?
"Or because he had to prove that he could succeed where you failed!" Bellatrix stabs at his chest with an accusing finger.
He knocks her hand away. "I never had to prove anything to anyone; why should it have been any different for him?" And there we have Sirius in a nutshell: the quintessential borderline sociopath who is not only incapable of understanding that not everyone is like him, but also hostile to the very notion! Oh, Sirius.
"Because he wasn't born to it! Because you forced him to take on your responsibilities when he wasn't strong enough to shoulder them!" she replies hotly. She takes a deep breath, attempting to recoup her cruel composure. "You're the one who left him with no choice, Sirius, not I, and you're only lying to yourself by refusing to –" I don't think this bit is very in character, but then again it is because she's got to know that there's nothing she could possibly say that would enrage him more. Sirius is so self-deluded that he doesn't understand the irony at all.
His face twists in rage. "Shut up!" he hisses, slamming her against the fence and pinning her there with one long-fingered hand around her slender neck. "Just shut your bloody mouth, you hag, or –"
Her eyes, which widened as her back hit the ironwork, suddenly flash with amusement. "Or what? What will you do?" She laughs again, high and mocking and horrible, and he tightens his fingers around her white throat just to stop the sound. (Again I would like to reiterate the extreme and possibly sexual love I have forpojypojy.) Her smirk widens into a malicious smile, eyes glittering, and she leans further into his touch, completely cutting off her airway.
Sirius' eyes widen. "You're sick, Bella," he says, taking a step back and holding her at arm's length, but he doesn't loosen his chokehold.
Am I? she mouths, and in a flurry of movement she locks her arms around his shoulders and pulls him to her. He struggles; she stops him by slipping a thigh between his legs to press against his groin through his robes.
"Let me go!"
She leans in and kisses him instead, open-eyed and scornful, brutally shoving his lips open with her own. (I don't think Bella is the type ever to kiss with her eyes closed, really. Unless she is, in fact, sleeping with Tom, in which case she'd shut her eyes in reverence whilst the Snaky Tongue of Doom attacks her tonsils.) Her tongue sweeps across his teeth, and she shudders when he bites down even as her throat spasms against his hand.
The still air of her mouth is revolting as it is intoxicating. His eyes slide shut as the taste of power he knows he shouldn't want floods his palate, thick and heady like liquor, like he's drinking darkness itself from her lips. I text-messaged this bit, back when it was a single sentence and none of the subsequent material was written, to Shannon while she was at work, and she totally sent me back cell-phone keysmashings and it was marvelous.
That thought jars him, bringing him back to himself. The touch of her tongue suddenly feels weak against his; her chest trembles, and her eyes are glazed, and it dawns on Sirius that he's killing her. I've never almost killed someone before, but I imagine that it's a slow sort of realization rather than a "HOLY SHIT" kind of moment. The "HOLY SHIT" comes after, yes?
It doesn't bother him nearly as much as it should. Again with the borderline sociopath.
What does bother him is the horrified realization that choking the life from her has made him achingly, impossibly hard. He snatches back his hand as if burned, uncurling his fingers from her now-bruised throat and stumbling in his haste to disentangle their legs.
She breathes a measured sigh instead of the desperate gasp Sirius expects, once again looking at him with angry contempt. "Pathetic," she spits, and he turns away, hands once again balling involuntarily into fists.
"Sick," he repeats. "You are fucking sick."
Bellatrix circles him, pushing him back against the fence with one white hand in the center of his chest. "So are you," she says with a Cheshire-Cat smile, fingers of her other hand trailing down his stomach to palm his erection through his trousers.
Her teasingly light touch pins him in place as surely as a Binding Spell. (She is crazy, remember, and I wouldn't be moving if I were him, either.) Sirius grips the bars of the fence at his back. "Don't touch me," he grinds out.
"Oh, but you want it so very badly." She emphasizes the word by squeezing his cock.
He bites his tongue on the shuddering moan that threatens to escape his chest. "I want nothing from you, Bella, not a damned thing." LIAR.
She hums softly. "You don't want me, perhaps. Not on my knees, not on my back." She leans in to murmur in his ear. "But you want your hands around my throat again, don't you? Want to strangle me until I go limp and lifeless under you? I can see it in your eyes, Sirius, so don't try to deny it." He belatedly squeezes his eyes shut, and she laughs and licks his earlobe, unbuttoning his trousers and sliding her hand into his pants to curl around his naked prick. "It's almost unbearable, how much you want it." Hands down, this is the best paragraph I have ever written, ever. Every time I go back and read it I am fucking floored that those words actually came from my head.
Sirius clenches his jaw and says nothing, wishing he pushed her away before she'd got her hand around his bits. Hindsight's 20/20, Mr. Black.
"It's a crude and filthy way to kill," she continues, stroking him firmly, "but then again, you're far too virtuous to have learned the proper way to go about these things, aren't you? Do you want to know how it feels, to just say the words and watch the light leave their eyes?"
"Stop," he says, eyes still tightly closed.
The next bit started out with me trying to describe the Queen of All Orgasms in the most overblown metaphors possible, but it got so much darker and more decadent than I was planning on so quickly. I think it was pretty much inevitable, after that other paragraph.
"It's like falling, like your heart is trying to jump out of your mouth as the wind whips your hair in your face, but there's no fear of hitting the ground." The best way I've ever heard an orgasm described is "It's like going into orbit," but I didn't think Bella would say something like that, possibly because wizards don't appear to have the extreme fascination Muggles do with space, and partially because it's too simple.
Her nails graze the head of his cock, and he hisses.
"It's like the richest wine, the darkest chocolate, the sweetest fruit on your tongue, like nothing you've ever tasted, but as soon as it touches your lips all you can think is more." Her wrist twists sharply, his foreskin sliding under her fingers. "Like a dozen different narcotic potions bursting into your bloodstream all at once. I have waited a year and twenty fics to use this grammatical construct. No joke.
"It's better than the best fuck you've ever had, like every muscle in your body is singing with tension and then relaxing as one, like coming so hard fireworks go off behind your eyes and you can't help but scream from the pleasure of it, but better because this kind of power feels so much better than sex that you can't even begin to imagine it."
Sirius can hardly breathe for wanting, for hating, for feeling, for trapping the gasps and groans she's coaxing from him somewhere in his chest until he shakes with the effort.
He feels her smile into his neck, and then she whispers, "It's like your first breath of air after someone tries to throttle the life from your lungs," against his skin and he's gone, convulsing and coming all over her hand as his vision goes white from behind his unopened eyes. I wasn't intending on continuing the breathplay metaphor through, but as soon as the idea occurred to me I basically felt like an idiot for not conceiving of it that way from the beginning, especially because I can think of no fewer than two other Blackcest fics and who fucking knows how many stories with other pairings that do precisely this sort of thing. But oxygen dep - which many of you know kinks me really fucking hard - isn't even primarily about control in my head, probably because I've never had a partner who was amenable to helping me out with it; it's about the fucking around with your brain chemistry and manipulating your body to make you see stars. The control thing is just a bonus, really. *g*
After a minute she releases him, unceremoniously wiping her hand on his clothes and not bothering to tuck him back in. No nonsense, that's my Bella.
It takes him a moment to unwrap his cramped hands from the ironwork, wincing when he sees the rust clinging to his skin, and another to put his stiff fingers to use doing up his trousers. He can feel her eyes on him, but he refuses to look up, staring intently at the tiny flakes of reddish-brown that have worked their way under his fingernails and scattered over his clothing. If any of you didn't get the rust=blood thing here, I obviously need to shoot myself because I already thought I was kicking the shit out the horse's corpse here.
Clearing her throat, Bellatrix asks, "Do you understand, now?"
"What is there to understand, Bella? Nothing has changed; you're still insane, I still hate you, and Regulus is still dead." He wants to laugh, and he wants another bloody cigarette, but he can't find the energy for either. Again with the smoking. "Although now, I will almost certainly kill you if you ever come near me again." Irony++;
"It doesn't have to be that way." I don't know why she bothers, honestly. She knows that he has too much invested in thinking of her and everything she represents as the enemy to admit she's right.
Sirius glares at her through his eyelashes. "Yes, it does."
She watches him, arms folded over her chest. "You hate so beautifully, Sirius, and for what? An old Muggle-loving fool's dreams of equality?"
"Yes!" he yells.
Bellatrix scoffs. "Do shut up. You're an arrogant little bastard and always have been – you don't even know what equality means."
"Don't tell me what I know!" Awww, Sirius. The truth hurts, doesn't it?
"You know you're better than everyone else, even if you won't own the reason for it."
"No," he says; it's a lie, and he knows it. "No."
"You can't deny the Dark in you, Sirius, and your precious Order will never accept you for it. They will never trust power like yours."
"Keep it up; I almost believe that you give a damn," he replies, irritated. He turns again to look out over the cemetery, at all that disconcerting, horrible beauty. "God, I hate this place."
"Then why are you here?" she asks, her tone sharp.
"Because I loved my brother just a little bit more than I despise you, Bella, and no other reason." He sighs and tries to rub away the rust on his palms.
"The brother who died because of you."
"Shut your fucking mouth."
"Like it or not, cousin, we're equals in this, as in everything else." This line almost drove me to drink. It got moved around at least half a dozen times before I found a place where it fits, and even then it doesn't have the impact I wanted it to have. Sigh.
"We are nothing of the sort," Sirius snarls. He stares at the ground for a long moment. "I hope," he finally says, "that the Muggles' Hell exists, just so I can have the satisfaction of sending you there." *continues to beat readers over the head with the irony stick* This is my favorite line in the fic, by the way. The only other real contenders are "General narcissism and long experience" and "Then you're clearly not listening."
"Is that any way to talk to family?" He can hear the smirk creeping back into her voice.
"You are no family of mine, Lestrange."
"Blood never lies, Sirius." She has a platitude for every occasion, my Bella, and they're all twisted round to say whatever she wants them to say.
Sirius finally meets her eyes again. "Blood never says anything at all."
Her scornful laughter rings in his ears as he Apparates away. I wrote this line before 60% of the rest of the story, and it never once changed. I can say that only rarely about stories, unfortunately.
. . .
"Does it matter if she's my cousin?" snapped Sirius. "As far as I'm concerned, they're not my family. She's certainly not my family…D'you think I'm proud of having relatives like her?"
Asetrangere pointed out, the line I cleverly excised from that quote kind of renders the entire scene very, very canon-noncompliant, but I did it anyway because the story idea was just too fucking good. And like I told Anne-Elisa, would you tell your teenaged godson about that time you had it off with your cousin whom you despise? :D
At the wave of your hand?
Like the sun's just gonna drop
If it's night you demand
Well, in the dark we're just air
So the house might dissolve.
But once we're gone,
Who's gonna care
If we were ever here at all?
Well, summer's gonna come
It's gonna cloud our eyes again.
No need to focus when there's nothing that's worth seeing.
So we trade liquor for blood
In an attempt to tip the scales;
I think you lost what you loved in that mess of details.
They seemed so important at the time,
But now you can't even recall
Any names, faces, or lines.
It's more the feeling of it all.
Well, winter's gonna end
I'm gonna clean these veins again.
So close to dying that I finally can start living.
So this story was my second request for
reversathon, which I took after I had to default on my first one owing the the first one being something I could never in three million years write.Basically I fell in love with the concept as soon as
fluffyllama sent me the prompt.I wibbled a huge amount about where to set this story; I got 400 words into a "Sirius runs into Bella when the Order foils a raid on someone's house, they have angsty sex and Remus watches which is why Remus doesn't trust Sirius omfg!" but then decided it was stupid and unworkable, even after removing Remus from the picture because I couldn't figure out a reason why he'd just watch and not, y'know, fire off a curse or two at Bella because she's apparently attacking Sirius. I also considered doing the channish "day Sirius leaves home" thing, which had the advantage of being more canon-compliant, but also wasn't really the story I wanted to tell because it left out the crucial element of Regulus angst, which I don't really feel like any story about Sirius is complete without. (I'm such an angstwhore.)
The cemetery was my original idea, and I was leery of it because I was afraid that it would come out all cliche and ridiculous and Gothy, but since it was the story I really wanted to tell, I couldn't really abandon it. Stories get into my brain like that sometimes; it's really irritating.
The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black buries its dead in a tiny churchyard in Islington, expanded to cover the better part of an acre and cloaked from Muggle eyes by centuries' worth of wards and charms. The protections are so strong that even to magical eyes, the air shimmers and glows like something out of a fairy story. I refuse either to confirm or deny that I had Neverwhere on the brain while writing that sentence.
Standing in the shadow of the chapel, flicking a cigarette and kicking the gravelly soil around with the toe of his shoe, Sirius wonders why the hell they bothered. Why does he smoke?! Stupid fanon. I don't smoke. I don't even like smoking; I've only done it once. But Sirius apparently smokes like a chimney whenever he's stressed out. Fucked if I know why I always see him that way in my head.
He idly trails his fingers over the wrought-iron fence, the black perfection of its surface marred by rust and neglect. The haphazard rows of headstones and monuments beyond the fence seem out of place and sad, as if the big, unnaturally-shaped pieces of granite and marble just showed up while nobody was looking and stay there, year in and year out and in various states of disrepair, ruining a perfectly good grassy field with their purposeful disorder. It's beautiful and ugly all at once, the Baroque statues warring for dominance with the tidy new stones while lilies mourn in their shadows. FYI:
pojypojy's art perfectly got the fence as I saw it in my head. I want her to draw more stuffs from this story because it's blatantly obvious that she actually managed to crawl into my head. Brain twins wot?Sirius hates it, hates that it's as fascinating as it is repulsive. Hates that he can't decide whether he should push open the creaking, ornate gates or Apparate away as fast as his magic can carry him. At the risk of sounding like a total narcissist, I heart that turn of phrase.
Hates the two newly-turned graves that compelled him to come here in the first place. ANGST!
He smokes his fag all the way down to the filter and tosses it to the ground, raising a foot to stamp out the still-burning ember.
The pointed toe of an elegant black boot beats him to it, grinding the butt into the rocky dirt. "Muggle cigarettes, Sirius? How quaint." Oh, Bella. You are such a bitch. ♥
He glowers at her over his shoulder. "Fuck off, Lestrange."
"Those things are terrible for you, you know," Bellatrix continues amiably, as if she hadn't heard his comment. As if she cared.
"So is throwing around Cruciatus like it's a Cheering Charm." Love that one, too. He turns around, leaning against the fence and crossing his arms across his chest. "What do you want? The blood wards here still know me, so it's not like you can do me any damage." I like this idea much more than I should. But I know if I were the matriarch of an ancient aristocratic family given to Dark magic and insanity, I'd make sure there were some neutral-ground sorts of places where my children couldn't murder one another.
She looks at him, gaze level and just short of disinterested. "Why do you perpetually think everything has to be about you?"
"General narcissism and long experience. Answer the question." Come on, Padfoot, you know that's not the way she operates. Why waste your breath?
"Of the two of us, I'm the only one with any genuine cause to be here at all. It's not your family buried here." She narrows her eyes calculatingly. "Or is it? Having second thoughts, are we?"
"Don't be stupid." She's anything but, dollface.
"I wouldn't dream of it," she says, stepping forward and tangling her fingers in the fence's elaborate tracery of scrollwork. "Such a tragedy, really."
Sirius smiles mirthlessly, recognizing the game she's playing. "Oh, I'm sure. That's the official line, is it? Did the old bat buy your crocodile tears, Bella? Because I don't." I've never seen a Regulus'-funeral!fic from Bella's point of view, or even Walburga's for that matter. Some must exist, but I've never seen it.
"You think I'm pleased he died a traitor?" Bellatrix challenges, her voice hard.
He snorts. "No, but I expect you to be just the least bit upset that he died at all." Asking too much there, sweetheart.
"He knew what he was doing when he betrayed the Dark Lord!"
"Regulus never betrayed anyone, you mad bitch. He just came to his senses." I wish I had any sort of confidence that canon!Sirius actually felt this way. :( I feel like Fab; I want Sirius to be so much nicer than he in actuality is. He fumbles in his pocket for his fags, shaking another one out, lighting it, and taking a long drag. "But don't let that interfere with your self-righteous zealotry." Sirius blows smoke in her face.
She curls her lip in distaste. "How can you stand that rubbish?" You're such a maiden aunt, Bella-love.
"I don't know." Another puff of smoke blows her way. "How can you stand to lick the arse of the whoreson who killed my brother?" ZIIIIING!
"How dare you!" Her fingers twitch at her side, clearly wishing for the use of her wand. I'm not sure I like this sentence anymore, especially seeing as how in my conception of the wards, she could in fact still use her wand, just not to harm Sirius. Which is what she really wants to do, of course, so the entire point is moot and oh shit I just made my head hurt.
"How dare I?" He drops his cigarette at her feet, ignoring the automatic answering itch in his own wand hand and clenching his fingers into a white-knuckled fist instead. "If not for that witless lickspittle you married, none of us would be tied up in this mess at all!" Cindy didn't like the "witless lickspittle" bit. I whined at her and kept it anyhow because I liked it and Sazzle said it was jawesome and really, if you can't use words like that in fic, when can you use them?
Bellatrix blinks at him for a second, and then she bursts out laughing. "This is my fault, is it? Oh, you poor innocent." She drops her voice, her tone becoming dark and knowing. "You could never hold a candle to Rodolphus, cousin. He understands family. Duty. His place in the world." You're not fooling anyone, dear heart. You know that, right?
"I haven't any family," Sirius snaps, half-raising his fist to strike her before clamping harshly down on his temper, because he knows that she's not worth it. "Not as far as you and yours are concerned." Methinks the lad doth protest too much!
"And what of them?" she asks, gesturing towards the two new graves and affecting an expression of false innocence, one that is entirely spoiled by the gleeful malice she can't quite hide.
He mirrors her expression and her tone. "You might have noticed that they're dead, seeing as how your aunt buried them yesterday. Tell me, how is she taking the end of her line? Not well, I'd wager, especially since you're barren as the Jerusalem desert, and Cissy will get no good from a ponce like Lucius Malfoy." I just can't keep from picking on Lucius. It's a sickness. He sweeps his eyes over the fading, serenely awful cemetery. "Take a long look, Bella. This is the only future left for that family you talk so much about." This bit was longer orginally, and was much more pretentious and stilted. I miss the old lines regardless.
Bellatrix looks at him with disgust. "How convenient for you, Sirius, that you have me to condemn." Well, he doesn't know how to take responsibility for himself, so he'd probably be blaming you even if it weren't, y'know, actually your fault.
"You so badly wanted a chance to toady up to that madman," Sirius sneers, "and you dragged Regulus down with you. Christ, he was just a kid!"
"It was never meant for him, you stupid boy. It should have been you." Oh, the condescension. I love you, Bella.
"What, you'd rather I was the one underground? I'm in shock, Bella, truly I am." Gah, it's so too bad they hate each others' guts, because they're so fucking perfect together. Am I going to hell for thinking that?
"You wouldn't have died at all," she counters.
Sirius goes very still. "You had better not be saying what I think you're saying."
"Spare me," she says. "As if I would insult the Dark Lord by insinuating that He might have you."
A sardonic smile. "I think that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."
"Then you're clearly not listening." OH, IT'S ON. Her glare radiates contempt. "You know that it didn't have to be this way."
"I think I just said that, actually." Snarky, snarky bastard.
"Right, when you blamed me for your brother's broken promises and your father's broken heart. Anything to avoid taking the slightest bit of responsibility for yourself."
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
"Did I stutter?" Five minutes ago it was like an Elk's Lodge meeting up in this motherfucker, and now it's as quiet as a church!
He snorts. "You can't seriously be trying to pin any of this on me." Sirius spreads his hands in careless indication of the scenery behind him.
"Oh, of course not, because Sirius Black is a law unto himself, free from such mundane concerns as simple cause and effect." She cocks her head to one side. "Tell me, what exactly did you expect would happen after your Christmastime (I meta'd about this in the
reversathon comment thread) tantrum? What did you think the rest of us would do after you walked out?""I certainly never thought you'd begin grooming a child to become a fucking Death Eater!" That's because you're an idiot, Sirius.
"Regulus ceased to be a child the moment you packed your trunk!"
"Because people like you and that horrible old woman wouldn't let him stay one!" he yells. I wonder when the last time he actually called her "Mother" (without meaning it as an insult) was?
"Or because he had to prove that he could succeed where you failed!" Bellatrix stabs at his chest with an accusing finger.
He knocks her hand away. "I never had to prove anything to anyone; why should it have been any different for him?" And there we have Sirius in a nutshell: the quintessential borderline sociopath who is not only incapable of understanding that not everyone is like him, but also hostile to the very notion! Oh, Sirius.
"Because he wasn't born to it! Because you forced him to take on your responsibilities when he wasn't strong enough to shoulder them!" she replies hotly. She takes a deep breath, attempting to recoup her cruel composure. "You're the one who left him with no choice, Sirius, not I, and you're only lying to yourself by refusing to –" I don't think this bit is very in character, but then again it is because she's got to know that there's nothing she could possibly say that would enrage him more. Sirius is so self-deluded that he doesn't understand the irony at all.
His face twists in rage. "Shut up!" he hisses, slamming her against the fence and pinning her there with one long-fingered hand around her slender neck. "Just shut your bloody mouth, you hag, or –"
Her eyes, which widened as her back hit the ironwork, suddenly flash with amusement. "Or what? What will you do?" She laughs again, high and mocking and horrible, and he tightens his fingers around her white throat just to stop the sound. (Again I would like to reiterate the extreme and possibly sexual love I have for
pojypojy.) Her smirk widens into a malicious smile, eyes glittering, and she leans further into his touch, completely cutting off her airway.Sirius' eyes widen. "You're sick, Bella," he says, taking a step back and holding her at arm's length, but he doesn't loosen his chokehold.
Am I? she mouths, and in a flurry of movement she locks her arms around his shoulders and pulls him to her. He struggles; she stops him by slipping a thigh between his legs to press against his groin through his robes.
"Let me go!"
She leans in and kisses him instead, open-eyed and scornful, brutally shoving his lips open with her own. (I don't think Bella is the type ever to kiss with her eyes closed, really. Unless she is, in fact, sleeping with Tom, in which case she'd shut her eyes in reverence whilst the Snaky Tongue of Doom attacks her tonsils.) Her tongue sweeps across his teeth, and she shudders when he bites down even as her throat spasms against his hand.
The still air of her mouth is revolting as it is intoxicating. His eyes slide shut as the taste of power he knows he shouldn't want floods his palate, thick and heady like liquor, like he's drinking darkness itself from her lips. I text-messaged this bit, back when it was a single sentence and none of the subsequent material was written, to Shannon while she was at work, and she totally sent me back cell-phone keysmashings and it was marvelous.
That thought jars him, bringing him back to himself. The touch of her tongue suddenly feels weak against his; her chest trembles, and her eyes are glazed, and it dawns on Sirius that he's killing her. I've never almost killed someone before, but I imagine that it's a slow sort of realization rather than a "HOLY SHIT" kind of moment. The "HOLY SHIT" comes after, yes?
It doesn't bother him nearly as much as it should. Again with the borderline sociopath.
What does bother him is the horrified realization that choking the life from her has made him achingly, impossibly hard. He snatches back his hand as if burned, uncurling his fingers from her now-bruised throat and stumbling in his haste to disentangle their legs.
She breathes a measured sigh instead of the desperate gasp Sirius expects, once again looking at him with angry contempt. "Pathetic," she spits, and he turns away, hands once again balling involuntarily into fists.
"Sick," he repeats. "You are fucking sick."
Bellatrix circles him, pushing him back against the fence with one white hand in the center of his chest. "So are you," she says with a Cheshire-Cat smile, fingers of her other hand trailing down his stomach to palm his erection through his trousers.
Her teasingly light touch pins him in place as surely as a Binding Spell. (She is crazy, remember, and I wouldn't be moving if I were him, either.) Sirius grips the bars of the fence at his back. "Don't touch me," he grinds out.
"Oh, but you want it so very badly." She emphasizes the word by squeezing his cock.
He bites his tongue on the shuddering moan that threatens to escape his chest. "I want nothing from you, Bella, not a damned thing." LIAR.
She hums softly. "You don't want me, perhaps. Not on my knees, not on my back." She leans in to murmur in his ear. "But you want your hands around my throat again, don't you? Want to strangle me until I go limp and lifeless under you? I can see it in your eyes, Sirius, so don't try to deny it." He belatedly squeezes his eyes shut, and she laughs and licks his earlobe, unbuttoning his trousers and sliding her hand into his pants to curl around his naked prick. "It's almost unbearable, how much you want it." Hands down, this is the best paragraph I have ever written, ever. Every time I go back and read it I am fucking floored that those words actually came from my head.
Sirius clenches his jaw and says nothing, wishing he pushed her away before she'd got her hand around his bits. Hindsight's 20/20, Mr. Black.
"It's a crude and filthy way to kill," she continues, stroking him firmly, "but then again, you're far too virtuous to have learned the proper way to go about these things, aren't you? Do you want to know how it feels, to just say the words and watch the light leave their eyes?"
"Stop," he says, eyes still tightly closed.
The next bit started out with me trying to describe the Queen of All Orgasms in the most overblown metaphors possible, but it got so much darker and more decadent than I was planning on so quickly. I think it was pretty much inevitable, after that other paragraph.
"It's like falling, like your heart is trying to jump out of your mouth as the wind whips your hair in your face, but there's no fear of hitting the ground." The best way I've ever heard an orgasm described is "It's like going into orbit," but I didn't think Bella would say something like that, possibly because wizards don't appear to have the extreme fascination Muggles do with space, and partially because it's too simple.
Her nails graze the head of his cock, and he hisses.
"It's like the richest wine, the darkest chocolate, the sweetest fruit on your tongue, like nothing you've ever tasted, but as soon as it touches your lips all you can think is more." Her wrist twists sharply, his foreskin sliding under her fingers. "Like a dozen different narcotic potions bursting into your bloodstream all at once. I have waited a year and twenty fics to use this grammatical construct. No joke.
"It's better than the best fuck you've ever had, like every muscle in your body is singing with tension and then relaxing as one, like coming so hard fireworks go off behind your eyes and you can't help but scream from the pleasure of it, but better because this kind of power feels so much better than sex that you can't even begin to imagine it."
Sirius can hardly breathe for wanting, for hating, for feeling, for trapping the gasps and groans she's coaxing from him somewhere in his chest until he shakes with the effort.
He feels her smile into his neck, and then she whispers, "It's like your first breath of air after someone tries to throttle the life from your lungs," against his skin and he's gone, convulsing and coming all over her hand as his vision goes white from behind his unopened eyes. I wasn't intending on continuing the breathplay metaphor through, but as soon as the idea occurred to me I basically felt like an idiot for not conceiving of it that way from the beginning, especially because I can think of no fewer than two other Blackcest fics and who fucking knows how many stories with other pairings that do precisely this sort of thing. But oxygen dep - which many of you know kinks me really fucking hard - isn't even primarily about control in my head, probably because I've never had a partner who was amenable to helping me out with it; it's about the fucking around with your brain chemistry and manipulating your body to make you see stars. The control thing is just a bonus, really. *g*
After a minute she releases him, unceremoniously wiping her hand on his clothes and not bothering to tuck him back in. No nonsense, that's my Bella.
It takes him a moment to unwrap his cramped hands from the ironwork, wincing when he sees the rust clinging to his skin, and another to put his stiff fingers to use doing up his trousers. He can feel her eyes on him, but he refuses to look up, staring intently at the tiny flakes of reddish-brown that have worked their way under his fingernails and scattered over his clothing. If any of you didn't get the rust=blood thing here, I obviously need to shoot myself because I already thought I was kicking the shit out the horse's corpse here.
Clearing her throat, Bellatrix asks, "Do you understand, now?"
"What is there to understand, Bella? Nothing has changed; you're still insane, I still hate you, and Regulus is still dead." He wants to laugh, and he wants another bloody cigarette, but he can't find the energy for either. Again with the smoking. "Although now, I will almost certainly kill you if you ever come near me again." Irony++;
"It doesn't have to be that way." I don't know why she bothers, honestly. She knows that he has too much invested in thinking of her and everything she represents as the enemy to admit she's right.
Sirius glares at her through his eyelashes. "Yes, it does."
She watches him, arms folded over her chest. "You hate so beautifully, Sirius, and for what? An old Muggle-loving fool's dreams of equality?"
"Yes!" he yells.
Bellatrix scoffs. "Do shut up. You're an arrogant little bastard and always have been – you don't even know what equality means."
"Don't tell me what I know!" Awww, Sirius. The truth hurts, doesn't it?
"You know you're better than everyone else, even if you won't own the reason for it."
"No," he says; it's a lie, and he knows it. "No."
"You can't deny the Dark in you, Sirius, and your precious Order will never accept you for it. They will never trust power like yours."
"Keep it up; I almost believe that you give a damn," he replies, irritated. He turns again to look out over the cemetery, at all that disconcerting, horrible beauty. "God, I hate this place."
"Then why are you here?" she asks, her tone sharp.
"Because I loved my brother just a little bit more than I despise you, Bella, and no other reason." He sighs and tries to rub away the rust on his palms.
"The brother who died because of you."
"Shut your fucking mouth."
"Like it or not, cousin, we're equals in this, as in everything else." This line almost drove me to drink. It got moved around at least half a dozen times before I found a place where it fits, and even then it doesn't have the impact I wanted it to have. Sigh.
"We are nothing of the sort," Sirius snarls. He stares at the ground for a long moment. "I hope," he finally says, "that the Muggles' Hell exists, just so I can have the satisfaction of sending you there." *continues to beat readers over the head with the irony stick* This is my favorite line in the fic, by the way. The only other real contenders are "General narcissism and long experience" and "Then you're clearly not listening."
"Is that any way to talk to family?" He can hear the smirk creeping back into her voice.
"You are no family of mine, Lestrange."
"Blood never lies, Sirius." She has a platitude for every occasion, my Bella, and they're all twisted round to say whatever she wants them to say.
Sirius finally meets her eyes again. "Blood never says anything at all."
Her scornful laughter rings in his ears as he Apparates away. I wrote this line before 60% of the rest of the story, and it never once changed. I can say that only rarely about stories, unfortunately.
"Does it matter if she's my cousin?" snapped Sirius. "As far as I'm concerned, they're not my family. She's certainly not my family…D'you think I'm proud of having relatives like her?"
As
etrangere pointed out, the line I cleverly excised from that quote kind of renders the entire scene very, very canon-noncompliant, but I did it anyway because the story idea was just too fucking good. And like I told Anne-Elisa, would you tell your teenaged godson about that time you had it off with your cousin whom you despise? :D
