payglorytoashes: (our eyes of flesh see only night)
lestrange. ([personal profile] payglorytoashes) wrote in [community profile] multiversallogs 2012-01-14 04:40 am (UTC)

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.

Post a comment in response:

This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting