You're not as brave as you were at the start

[byrightsinhell]

Who: Lucii (Jr. and Sr.)
What: Meeting and surrealness!
Where: The Malfoy townhouse
When: backdated to the day after Lucius Sr. attempted to mug Narcissa
Notes:
Warnings: None yet, angst probable.

Lucius is well aware of how surreal his life has become. He only just felt he'd adjusted to working with an alternate of the bloody Boy Who Lived, and to knowing a younger alternate of his own wife. But this was something else again. He'd seen no sense disturbing his alternate the previous night, as late as he'd gotten in, but he's decided to take to take today off. He suspects he might need it.

He's down at breakfast at his normal time. He hasn't really slept much, but he'll make up the difference later; Draco is still young enough that his sleep schedule remains fundamentally flexible, and a bit of a potion and some tea usually tides him over.

He hasn't the least idea how this will go, but he refuses to be intimidated by the idea of himself. A Malfoy has his pride.

Comments

[byrightsinhell]

Lucius stands too. "You don't think I know that?" he asks, quietly. "The moment Bellatrix got here, she jabbed the damn thing." He doesn't feel the need to specify that he means the Mark.

"It still aches, and he's not even in the same universe we are, at present. I know what's at stake, I'm not a fool."

[amourpropre]

That almost has the elder of the two Lucii laugh -- it's a dry sound at the back of his throat, suppressed readily thanks to years of practicing general suppression. Kindled first at the predictable actions of Bellatrix-- and look how she winds up-- and then allowed to spark at this proclamation that is just so ridiculous. The curve of his mouth is small and mean, and his eyes are hard.

"Oh, but you are. But don't worry, it's far down the list of other things people will identify you as."

He also has good practice at feeling superior, and though it's been a rare commodity lately, Lucius is self-assured in being so over his younger self, his voice chill and room for concession very slight. He starts away from the table, done with his half-filled cup of tea.

[byrightsinhell]

"I am sorry for what happened to you," he says, clipped and almost sharp. He is sorry, though more unnerved - he'd never confessed scared, even to himself. He can see just enough of himself in the man before him to throw him off balance.

"But I'm not going to give up. On the contrary," he adds, quiet if still precise, "it's all the more reason I will fight to make sure your future isn't my own."

[amourpropre]

Hard to say how much of this is honest and how much of it is the desire to put this fortunate young thing before him through its paces. A blurred line. But still, Lucius pauses and looks back at this apology, physically tense as if it were assault, once again wary when he ought not to be. He draws himself up some of their shared height, some sort of posturing to imply he needs no apology and the implicit compassion or pity or whatever passes for such an emotion for people like them, but that's the only protest he can afford.

He isn't convinced, but he is hardly the one that the younger of the two need convince. "For her sake, I wish you well in that," he states, evenly, before he resumes his way.

He'd say for his sake, too, but it probably doesn't work that. It's done.

[byrightsinhell]

Lucius does know himself well enough to know how toxic anything like pity can feel - no matter how pitiable the situation might actually be. The Lucius before him still has his Narcissa and his Draco, at home, and he is firmly of the opinion that anything short of losing them can eventually be recovered from. He needs to believe that.

It isn't as if he's entirely green - he did grow up during a war, and it shaped him, but into nothing like what he sees. (Not yet, an insidious voice in his mind whispers.)

He doesn't call out to stop him. It seems that he and his alternate are likely to collide in short, painful intervals.