hangman we played hide and seek on the fire escape

[payglorytoashes]

Who: Rodolphus and his dreams.
What: it's basically Candyland! Come on in.
Where: Technically his house, but ACTUALLY Candyland.
When: one night after Lucius Sr. has his fog encounter
Notes: maybe it's not Candyland. I don't know, I've never played Candyland. It could be Candyland.
Warnings: [22:54] jill: but I can't fuckin write about him waking up feeling "splattered" by something
[22:54] takhys: AHAHAHAHAHA.
[22:54] takhys: No, no, I think you should.

The place where his life ground to a halt was Azkaban. Rodolphus knows he had a life before it; he knows he was, if not entirely content, pleased with his few accomplishments, and ardent in his few loyalties. The memories of it remain. He has them and they remain clear, but Azkaban took the color and vitality and that thing he hadn't known was happiness, or maybe it wasn't but in comparison to whatever he has now, it passes as such. Falling in love with Bellatrix happened, he knows. Nights studying by himself, the pursuit of better understanding in runes, he did that. Pushing up his sleeve and giving his arm to his Lord, he remembers every moment, and the purity of the pain. And yet.

Often in his dreams, every place is Azkaban. The Lestrange manor, the halls of Hogwarts, the summer villas and libraries and townhouses, are all full of a waiting darkness that makes the dank Azkaban cells an inevitability. He may dream of being among strangers, or being with friends or family, but sooner or later, sometimes gradually, sometimes in those abrupt shifts, those dreams retreat and Azkaban returns.

It does not distress him. It is more or less home. Paintings are empty and the ground is covered with soot that bears no impression of footprints, but he's accustomed to such endless variations of lonely surrounds. Why, then, does he feel fear?

Fear hasn't come often to him since Azkaban. He has been afraid at certain times in Baedal, and though he couldn't say he enjoyed it, it was at least novel. The difference, he is slow to realize, must be the fog. He has dreamt of fog before, but not like this. Rodolphus recognizes on some level that this is Baedal fog. Though he's been in Baedal for months, it has been slow to reach his dreams, or maybe he's been slow to incorporate it. He can't remember if he's dreamt of Baedal specific events or people before. He can't even think of it in those terms, since he's not yet aware he's dreaming. There are only flashes of insight, the feeling that something is happening which is familiar but not right, like this has happened before but it happened a different way. It is not supposed to happen like this.

There is something out there.

"Bellatrix?"

Even as he speaks, he knows it's foolish. But when it comes to Bellatrix, he always has been.

The Fog of Baedal has peculiar qualities. The difference between it and its more natural counterpart is instinctive and self-evident: one is clammy and murky while the other is often warm to the touch, heated to blood temperature, and lit from within. Some people say that if you know what you’re doing, it’s possible to see frozen images of one’s homeworld through the fog and there’s some debate if they exist only to lure the unwary into the fog so its creatures can feed in safety. Like deep sea creatures, there are beings that seem unable to adjust to the atmosphere outside the fog and so they must fish for their prey.

In this dreamstate, the Fog advances forward as a solid wall fringed by little wisps that seem to form, dissolve, and reform while they pull the greater mass towards Rodolphus. Deep within the mist, a wavering dark form can be seen, but it doesn’t react to his voice.

The lack of response is not necessarily discouraging, or it wouldn’t be if the context were different. That would be typical of Bellatrix. But somehow, vain hopes aside, he is certain this is not her. (And why would she be anywhere he would like her anymore? Some knowledge is impossible to keep out of even dreams, especially when it’s only an extension of something he’s accepted for years.)

He has no wand. He rarely does, in his dreams. Retreat would be most sensible, but he feels disconnected from sensibility. The concept of being sensible still exists, in some alien fashion; he can feel the outline of it, he can grasp its absence and infer what he should and should not do, yet it seems unimportant. Someone is waiting for him. Should he not go? He has always gone. That’s the way things happen. Rodolphus takes one hesitant step toward the Fog, and it’s strange that its encroaching warmth would raise goosebumps. Another step, and their respective progress brings them into the dissolving edge of contact. Then he stands passively, allowing it to overtake him. That’s also the way things happen, he knows.

As if he’s approached a shallow sea, the fog laps at Rodolphus’ feet in gentle waves. As each swell breaks and retreats, little curlicued limbs of fog remain on his clothing only to fade away or be reabsorbed as the next wave crests and the ‘tide’ rises higher. It’s only moments before he’s enclosed in the warm, dry mist.

Within it, light behaves erratically. What must be sunlight from above is shattered or refracted in ways that gravity shouldn’t permit. Pathways and hidden objects are momentarily illuminated before the fog shifts and the light is consumed by patches that absorb or trap the light before releasing it in bursts more reminiscent of neurons firing than Roman candles.

One of these flares outlines the shape of a large animal or a man crouching. In the logic of dreams, it’s clear that whatever it is, it’s hungry.

The play of light is disorienting, almost hypnotic in the irregularity. He stands quietly, perceiving but not pursuing each briefly existent avenue in the fog. These paths, he thinks, are a sort of pattern, one that is too large and complicated for him to understand. He has never really understood.

In this frame of mind, the appearance of the figure, that animal or crouching man, does not surprise him — if he does not understand then it is not for him to question what happens. This is not to say seeing it is pleasant. There is a distinct inner chill and a bone-deep ache in his marked forearm, not to mention the sudden realization that coming here was a larger than usual blunder.

Now, however, there is no real place to retreat. Going backwards results in slightly different patches of fog, as do other directions. He might run, but running makes hungry things hungrier, he thinks. And, too, he has never run in his life. Strategic retreats, yes, or hurrying, but running in fear, never, not even when it would have been wiser. Rodolphus grips his mark with the other hand, scanning the fog as he takes slow, pointless steps backward. Perhaps his dark, lonely halls will come back, if he reaches for them. Perhaps he could return to familiar and barren wrongness rather than the gentle touches of miasma here.

The staccato bursts of light make it hard to tell if the beast is walking forward or advancing through incremental leaps in space. However it moves, there’s no denying that it’s caught sight of Rodolphus and is coming ever closer. It’s difficult to make out through the fog, but its posture hasn’t shifted to that of a hunter; rather, it’s watching him and conserving its energy. Perhaps Rodolphus is seized by the strange notion that it’s waiting for him to do something?

Looming beyond the edges of the fog, stand a group of people, some in wizarding dress, and all standing motionless around a collection of homes and businesses that at once are both familiar and strange.

That no attack has come yet is not much comfort. Now it seems there is some heavy expectation of him, a prospect which is almost as uncomfortable. The people just beyond the fog compound this sense. Rodolphus has lived his entire life in the context of certain people and certain causes, and there they are, not as they had been, but in some way transformed. Deep recognition is not possible, not in the throes of dreaming, and not through the haze of fog. Certainly not with the waiting beast and its uneven path that draws closer and closer.

The pain in his marked arm grows until he shoves the sleeve up, as if skin to skin contact would have effect on what he’s feeling. His mark is vivid in a way it hadn’t been during the false alarm some months earlier, and the particular hurt it causes, the pain he associates with being called, is weirdly unfamiliar — a stranger with the face of a friend, or a friend with the face of a stranger. There is no one to go to and nowhere to go. Unless...?

While in Azkaban, Rodolphus had missed the mass wizarding hysteria about the Grim, but he is of course aware of the lore. If this waiting beast is it, death must be imminent. As one of the most loyal, he had always been prepared to die. In the past months he’s idly contemplated it. So perhaps he is being called into death.

It makes a sort of dream logic sense, but even in this state, Rodolphus feels doubt. Voldemort had never really liked him. (Voldemort didn’t like anybody.) Still, the concept has been broached, and he must do something.

“Lord?” It comes out strange, almost sleepy, like he is actually asleep and just spoke out loud.

Beneath the oncoming beast, the ground is solid but hidden by fog, while up ahead the cobblestone street seems to wobble ever so slightly as the ‘people’ begin to move. Here, the ground has give. Those same creatures in front of him are soft, featureless and unformed, yet not entirely without intelligence. When Rodolphus approaches they reach out towards him with drooping, doughy limbs. There’s a garbled noise as if they’re trying to speak, to give instruction or a warning, but their words are swallowed by their own crude flesh.

Perched on the buildings are birds of all sorts and in unison, they spread their wings and forcibly throw their heads back into an impossible, rigor mortis position.

The not-quite-people, the give of the street, and their soft gnashing sounds are enough to give anyone pause, and even someone as barren of reaction as Rodolphus finds it hard to go any nearer. He has ventured into a kind of wrongness he has no context for and no means with which to deal. The clenching in his chest is terrible, unfamiliar. The way he strains against his will to understand the instruction given to him has a palpable dread. At the same time, there’s something else he’s struggling to grasp, something which almost occurred to him a few moments before but failed to fully connect. A spark of some idea, like the lights in the fog. What was it...?

The birds snap their wings open and their heads back; Rodolphus jerks away from them, the buildings, the horrible not-people, remembering/realizing as he does so that he’s asleep. He is dreaming, the Fog is in his house, it is smothering him, he is dreaming of something wrong and real — he has to wake up —

The birds turn their bodies towards him, following any sound he makes with their open wings; their heads bent so far back that they can’t be tracking him through sight or hearing.

Distance is so rarely certain in dreams. How far away is the beast? The streets with their fleshy cobblestones? How long does he have before the ground begins to get soft and sticky, giving way beneath his weight and holding him in place. As the cityscape gains on him, Rodolphus ought to be able to recognize that despite the appearance of separate humans, birds, or buildings, it’s all formed from the same slowly shifting tissue. There’s an instinctive knowledge that fairly screams if he touches any of it for too long, he’ll be absorbed into it and made over in its own image.

Just as not all of Baedal’s citizens are human, not all of them consist of corporeal forms. It’s so hungry and those fast asleep are easy prey in a world where it can warp reality.

Deep within the fog, there’s a soft noise as if something heavy was being hauled over smooth rocks. Curiously, the sense of something behind him swells until the birds turn away from their prey and refocus on the new target.

Dimly aware of his own harsh breathing (it seems to be coming from far away, which is an odd state of things, but there are so many other things to worry about), Rodolphus manages a few more steps of attempted escape before the cobblestones no longer allow such freedom of movement. Once, when they were both very young, Rabastan had hidden under something and grabbed his leg as Rodolphus passed by. A hand emerging from darkness to touch you is frightening. The way the road of flesh grips his leg is entirely different. It has the mindless, organic quality of digestion. And he understands, far better than he’d like, that that is what’s happening. He can actually feel a scream coming on, though as for all his reactions, it would be understated compared to most people.

Caught like an animal in a trap, but without the pain to focus him, Rodolphus cannot bear to look behind him. It’s the beast or something else that is strange and abhorrent. He can’t free his legs. He’s about to die as horribly as someone like him deserves, alone and pathetic, and all he can do is make a hoarse, frustrated, incoherent sound.

The problem with being a predator in Baedal is that invariably there’s something bigger, badder, and hungrier out there. The dreamscape anglerfish begins to fold in on itself, twitching its lures and trying to protect its soft belly from the encroaching fog and the beast within. As the mist rolls in and through the streets the ground should become firm again and the air dry and warm. If he’s lucky, Rodolphus might wake before the streets begin to scream.

He fights like a drowning man for the waking world, but Rodolphus has never been lucky: there are dog sounds, definite dog sounds, the sounds of eating and tearing in enthusiastic measures, the bliss dogs feel in consuming and, for those precious moments, forgetting they have been domesticated. Everything is dissolving around him (like white noise on a television, but he doesn’t know what that is), and his breath has come back to him from very far away. The sense of the dog lingers even as he starts to open his eyes, however. He can’t see it but the sound makes it clear to him — the beast ravaging with distended jaws, gobbets of viscera and blood flung from the force of its devouring and he feels and smells for a second the scraps of that dead thing hitting him.

Then it is gone. It’s all gone. He is alone in his empty house, everything shut up tight and the mark on his arm as harmless as the silence after a scream.