post soundtrack: a glacier slowly crashing into a boat of orphans

[payglorytoashes]

Who: Narcissa Malfoy and Rodolphus Lestrange-Black
What: :C
Where: the Malfoy townhouse
When: evening, after this post and after Narcissa has identified the body
Notes: :'C
Warnings: idk aren't we always terrible, in some way

In the winter, Rodolphus prefers walking over apparating. He's never claimed to be a particularly logical man, and indeed his family would never accuse him of that. Of course, it has little to do with sentiment — the exact opposite, maybe. So when he arrives at the Malfoy townhouse, it is evening, and he is peacefully empty of emotions. His work with Hellsing is not particularly thrilling, but it is engrossing and he is nothing if not careful and dutiful. He is dependable. He has always been that. His routine is predictable, though not set in stone; he often works late if only because work preoccupies him. It has been some time since he heard from Ilde, which he regards as perfectly natural, and she has, for now, slipped entirely from his mind. If anything, he's wondering about that strange presence in the Hellsing guild hall, which he had reported as promised, but it seems to have disappeared.

Life in Baedal, he reflects in a vague way as he hangs up his coat, is strange, but he can feel himself growing more and more accustomed to it every day, submissive to its limitations and growing slowly to fit its opportunities.

Comments

[vanities]

Narcissa is waiting for him, when he gets in - quite clearly waiting, in fact, in this quiet house that often isn't (her very deliberate voice ordering someone or other out of her kitchen, to clean up this or that after themselves because we don't have house-elves any more, this and that and breezing in and out because she has her own schedule to maintain as well). A cigarette is still burning in the ashtray when she comes to the doorway of the parlor to meet him, quiet-eyed in a way that she is so rarely.

"Rodolphus," she says, with the deliberate uncertainty of someone who has never been very good at this but will try, for those she loves. "You'd best come and sit."

[payglorytoashes]

The fact that Narcissa has been waiting for him makes him pause ever so minutely, but the way she addresses him slows his hand as he pulls at his scarf. For a moment he simply regards her, caught in the caution she displays and the immediate caution that arises in response. Then he wordlessly hangs the scarf over his coat and obediently comes to the parlor to sit. Physical movement is easy enough. Mental movement, however, has ceased, unable and unwilling to speculate on the matters which would bring about this situation. There aren't many. Some part of him already knows, but he can't go there without being pushed.

[vanities]

Once he's sitting, she does too; a moment later, folding her hands primly and wishing she were better at this, that it could be smoother. The thought that there is no good way of having such a conversation is a poor comfort.

"Bellatrix is dead," she says, and it feels unreal. Dead again. Dead this time. Existing in a constant state of better off that way-- Merlin, it's a mess. She's wondered so many times what sort of a man Rodolphus might have been if not for her sister and sitting here watching him now, she supposes she mourns for having never met such a man as much as for the mad ghost of her sister. Perhaps more. What might he have been--? Was this so inevitable for him as it was for her?

[payglorytoashes]

It hits and sinks without barely a trace, Rodolphus absorbing this spiky but appreciably straightforward news with his customary lack of expression. The absence of emotion is both reflexive and deliberate this time, the way weak material might sustain a hole but then just keep tearing and tearing. It is too massive, too all-encompassing to analyze, as it has always been. He sits for a few seconds without seeing Narcissa, and then, almost too quickly, nods to show he understood, self-conscious about his reaction even knowing there had barely been one.

"Thank you," he says, one part unmoved and unchanged and functioning exactly as he had, and one incalculable part off somewhere else, doing inexplicable things that threaten to reach the other part with echoes or tremors. He knows there is no one else in the house. He knows Narcissa waited to tell him personally. It is very kind and Narcissa is also in pain so the kindness is twice as hurtful to both of them. He thinks about some kind of gesture, the slightest of contacts, some expression of gratitude or comfort. He thinks about leaving the room and going somewhere else. He thinks about sitting here until he thinks of something better to do. Everyone is a stranger, even Narcissa, who is merely the nicest stranger he knows, and Bellatrix was strangest of all. He never had her, so how could he lose her?

"Thank you," he says again, this time meeting her eyes and looking at her, rather than some impossible distance — seeing her folded hands and the strain of her calmness, the watchful waiting.

[vanities]

"Hellsing will...look into it," she says, quietly. "I saw her body for myself, to be sure."

Oh, Bella, she'd said, so quietly, like it were just some silly little childhood mistake. She wonders if Bellatrix ever rightly grew up or if she'd always just been fixed in some twisted moment from years ago--