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mickume
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alt_potterverse

Dataset card Data Studio Files
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"And do you?" he asked neutrally. "Do you belong to me, even when you're with him?"
She let out a sigh, feeling his breath on her neck.
"When I close my eyes," she remarked, "he almost looks like you."
His nails dug into her waist as he pressed his hips against hers, drawing her leg up.
"Aren't you tired of pretending, Narcissa?" Tom asked softly, intimately, and a sound that might have been equally yes or no or Tom, please, deliver me slipped unbidden from her lips. "Haven't you fought it long enough?"
So what if I live a lie, Tom? she'd demanded of him, back when she thought she could resist his lure. Your life is as much a lie as anything—
This is not a lie, he'd said, and though lying was perhaps his greatest skill, she couldn't bring herself not to believe him. One day you will tire of pretending, and you'll come to me, Narcissa. Call it a prophecy.
"Call this fulfillment, then," she whispered, and he shivered in her arms.
She thought it would fade; even flames eventually die down, after all. Even wildfires burn out.
But for Tom, she was constantly ignited.
"I hate when you're gone from here," he said, pressing her back against the cold stone wall of his castle, the heat from the fireplace materializing in beads of sweat that clung to the places they touched. "I swear, even the waves miss you. They crash against the walls like they'd rather die than be without you."
"They always do that," she said, picturing the froth of the ocean tides outside the stained glass windows, the motion of them as steady and unyielding as his hips against hers. "I don't think I can take credit."
"I think it knows," he whispered to her. "It knows that I wouldn't be alive without you. This castle knows I would be nothing without you, Narcissa, and we suffer in your absence, brought to nothing again."
She bit hard on her tongue, not wanting to admit the truth; that it was she who suffered most in his absence, desperately pretending the silvery-blond head beside her at night was the raven-black she so badly desired, belonging to the man who toyed with her so easily she wondered if she were not part of his magic herse...
"Do you suffer, Tom?" she asked instead, yanking his head back and watching him hiss with pain, his tongue dragging slowly across his lip before it stretched into a darkly covetous smile.
"Show me," she whispered, and his eyes widened as he carried her to his bed, still unmade from the hours they'd spent there before.
What was perfunctory with Lucius—almost polite—was barbaric with Tom, and savage, and she relished the wild look in his blue eyes, the knowledge that he spent every waking moment craving her, refusing to relent for want of her. It was sex and it was carnal and it was love and it was magic, and there was no softness, no...
He twined his fingers in her pale hair, holding it in his hands like streaks of moonlight.
"Narcissa," he said, worshipping her like he would an idol, like a deity, like power itself. "Will you keep my secrets?"
She kissed him, brutally, and half-laughed into his mouth.
"Don't I always?" she asked, as he dragged his lips against her neck.
"I granted myself eternity," he whispered in her ear, "and I want to spend all of it with you."
If it was love, she thought, then love wasn't a pretty bauble to be held in the light; instead, it flashed, it blazed, it blistered and seared, and if this was love, then she finally knew that love wasn't pretty at all. It was devastating, every clandestine sensation set alight, and love was a match set to burn.
She burned for him.
She burned for him.
It wasn't only sex, though the Dark Lord's work—the furtive projects he continued, tucked away with her in his hidden castle rooms—had a similar sense of intimacy, of joining, to the point where sex and love and power were nearly indistinguishable.
"Magic is a function of many things," Tom said to her as they moved together, the slip of skin-against-skin as much a spell of its own as the words he spoke in her ear. "It's a language, a balance, a ritual. A connection between what flows in our blood," he said to the line of her neck, "and what beats in our hearts, t...
He broke off with a gasp as she leaned her head against his chest, coiling her fingers in the hair at the base of his skull to rock rhythmically against him, delivering him to familiar sparks of madness.
"If we are the same as magic, then what am I to you, Tom?" she asked him, letting his lips travel hungrily over her neck. "Tell me," she commanded with another yank at his hair, reminding him he was hers to command.
He gripped her hips violently, leaving marks from the pressure of his fingers.
"You are a storm," he said, "and I am the wreckage. You are a reckoning, and I am the price. You are an angel, a demon, a witch and a goddess, and you," he growled in her ear, his hand spreading flat against her belly, "for all your power, are unequivocally mine."
"And what are you, Tom?" she asked. "If I am yours?"
"I'm a Lord beholden to a queen," he told her, biting down on her shoulder as she laughed.
"Good," she said, closing her eyes with satisfaction. "Good."
"You seem distant tonight," Lucius said to the tension in her shoulders, eyeing her from across the bed. "More so than usual."
Tom, she thought, feeling the warmth of him, the thrill of him as he'd lain entwined with her, alternately stroking her hair, her arms, the line of her spine. Tom, I don't want to always be this—I can't be a liar forever—
So don't be, he said flatly. Leave him.
I can't, she replied, though he'd already known as much, and disliked to hear it as much as she disliked relaying it. Marriage vows, and besides, he wouldn't just let me go—
Do you want me to do something about it? he asked carefully, and she'd frozen, considering the terrible lengths she'd go to have him and pleading herself to silence.
"Do I?" she asked her husband, feigning ignorance. "I suppose I'm tired."
"Oh," Lucius said, swallowing heavily. "I guess you don't want to, um—"
Is she pregnant yet? she'd heard Abraxas say; the haughty grouch of a man who was never quite careful enough to keep his voice down inside the Manor. It's been long enough, Lucius. She's not meant to be some sort of trophy for you to take to the Dark Lord's castle. You gave her privilege, Lucius, and wealth, and now it...
"We can," she said carefully, trying not to shudder at the thought. "If you want to."
"I do," he assured her, though she felt it again; the sense that he wasn't quite looking at her. Like he was distracted, absent, staring at the manifestation of his father's disappointment rather than the wife his own master so dutifully adored. She let him lift the silk of her nightgown; let him slide her underwear as...
With her eyes closed, he could almost be Tom.
With her eyes closed, she could almost pretend.
It seemed she lived her whole life with her eyes closed, wandering in a daze until the Dark Lord's castle walls opened for her again, drawing her back into his arms.
"Why bone?" she asked Tom, repressing a still-present repulsion. "Bone, blood, flesh. All of it is just so—"
"Morbid?" he guessed, and she shuddered in answer, prompting him to chuckle. "It's the closest I can get to imitating life, Narcissa. And last I checked, you weren't much a fan of human sacrifice."
"Not true," she reminded him, rising to her feet and sliding her hand across the span of his shoulder blades. "I sacrificed you, didn't I?"
"And I remain grateful you did," he permitted, drawing one shoulder upwards to skate his lips across her knuckles. "Though I wonder," he murmured, "if your limits have shifted in the time that's passed."
"What does that mean?" she asked. "You already know your horcruxes work. I can't imagine you'll risk another one just for experimentation."
"I don't mean me," he said, and she stiffened, frowning.
"Then what do you—"
"I meant it, Narcissa," he said. "When I said I wanted eternity with you. I intend for eternity itself, and therefore, so should you."
She froze, swallowing suddenly on disbelief, or air.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying," he clarified, his blue eyes drifting to hers, "that you should have a horcrux."
He waited, watching her eyes widen.
"Breathe," he reminded her.
"And?" he prompted.
"Good," he said. "And I don't see why you're surprised. I couldn't bear to lose you, Narcissa, and I'm not a man to leave such things to chance. Obviously this was going to come up."
"But—" she began, and faltered, wondering how he could be so cavalier. "But don't you have to—to murder someone?"
"Yes," he replied, without elaboration.
"Oh," she managed, discovering that a faint, indistinguishable ringing was suddenly present in her ears. "Well, then."
"Magic is magic," he reminded her, dragging her attention back to him. "It's a sacrifice, at its core. The more you require from it, the more you have to offer it. But surely some prices are more easily paid."
She blinked. "Easily?"
He sighed, turning towards her.
"Narcissa," Tom ventured, taking a few steps to take hold of her hands, the two of them standing in the same spot he'd once died in her arms. "Isn't there someone your life would be better off without? Someone," he added, "whose absence would give you the things you desire most? I'd give you power if you wanted it," he...
"You—" she broke off, dizzied, as she processed what he'd said. "You want me to kill Lucius?"
She waited for him to say no.
She waited, breathless, for him to say no.
"Yes," he said, unsurprisingly. "It would resolve things rather neatly, wouldn't it?"
For a moment, she opened her mouth, certain a rational response would eventually formulate.
Instead she turned her head, vomiting abruptly on the floor.
It wasn't only sex.
Some nights, like this one, he held her close, curling himself around her, and they watched the fire's shadow dance along the castle walls, the waves crashing recklessly outside.
Some nights, like this one, she half-remembered he was a man; felt him like a lover who might have been hers in another reality.
Perhaps one where he'd grasped for less, and didn't require a hereafter.
Perhaps one where she were willing to do more, and didn't fear retribution.
Perhaps it was a reality only breaths apart from this one, and no reality was too far away.
"Tell me a secret," she coaxed him, pleading for certainty, and he tightened his arms around her, holding her so firmly she winced from pain.
"I think if anyone can destroy me, it will be you," he said back.
For a moment, she wanted to laugh.
Instead she sat upright, forcing her eyes shut.
"What is it?" he asked, brushing his lips against her arm.
"I feel sick," she whispered, something twisting wretchedly in her soul.
"It isn't mine," Tom said flatly, and Narcissa didn't look up.
"No," she agreed. "It can't be."
"Why not?" he demanded, and she closed her eyes briefly.
"Because," she exhaled, "I knew you wouldn't want—"
"Wouldn't want what?" he cut in brusquely, and she glanced up, pursing her lips.
"Breathe," she warned him.
He inhaled, glaring at her.
"And?" she prompted.
"Better," she said tartly, but he shook his head, pacing the floor.
"You used a spell," he said. "You used one for me, and not for him?"
"I couldn't with him," she said. "You know I couldn't."
He spun on his heel, staring at her.
"That," he growled, "should be my child."