FIC: "Strings that tie to you" for kethlenda
Title: Strings that tie to you
Recipient: kethlenda
Pairing: Narcissa gen (Bellatrix/Narcissa, Lucius/Narcissa)
Rating: R
Warnings: Incest
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Bellatrix has never belonged to Narcissa. As she grows older, Narcissa comes to realise she never will. Muggle AU.
Notes: I am sorry that you had to receive your gift so horrendously late, but I sincerely hope it's worth the wait. You deserve much better.
Bellatrix is seventeen. Narcissa runs after her one night when she leaves with her friends to haunt the dance halls and student pubs; Bellatrix has forgotten her bag, and Narcissa slips her shoes on and hurries along the street to catch her sister and her giggling friends. She finds them on the corner near the chemist's, their hands planted on their hips as they laugh, bending at the hip like hinges. As she watches, Bella ducks into an alleyway, the bright bouncing skirt of her polka dot dress spinning around her legs as she disappears.
Clutching the bag to her chest, Narcissa creeps forward, not edging too close to Bella's friends as she wouldn't approve if she thought Narcissa had been talking to them. The mouth of the alley gapes, rough and crumbling, and lined with dirty day-old newsprint. Narcissa is careful as she peers round, it wouldn't do to get caught, but she can't help the little gasp when she sees Bella pressed up against the filthy wall, the frills of her skirt up around her thighs as the hand of one of the college lads edges up her leg.
Blushing furiously, Narcissa hurries away again, past the girls practising their dance steps, their feet stamping stars from the pavement. She hurries all the way home, her feet soon sore from running in her pretty shoes, because they were Andromeda's and they pinch at the toe. The bag she tosses down in the hallway, and dashes upstairs to bury her face in Bella's pillow, the scent of her perfume still thick in the air. Music from a wireless drifts in through the open window.
She shouldn't be surprised. She certainly shouldn't be upset. Narcissa curls herself around the pillow and eventually falls asleep, and she doesn't wake up until Bella finally stumbles in. It's gone midnight, and her dress smells of smoke and cologne. Her lipstick is smudged and a fat dirty purple bruise sits smugly on the inside of her left thigh.
"You forgot your bag tonight," whispers Narcissa.
"I know." Bellatrix stretches languidly, like a cat, and then slips a hand around Narcissa's waist and pulls her closer. "You're an angel. You didn't need to bring it."
--
When they were children, Bellatrix would run down to the river each day in summer, to fight with the gypsy children in the claypits. Narcissa was always too young to go, and Andromeda refused to join in such silly, common games. So the two youngest stayed at home and had tea parties in the garden, and pretend not to notice the absence of their sister until she would finally roll in the back door in time for tea, filthy and breathless from her adventures.
After dinner, Bellatrix would be sent straight for a bath, and Narcissa would sit beside her and try to catch the smell of the river off her sister's hair before it was washed away. Bellatrix would splash her with the bath water, and tell her strange stories of the urchins and the river children, of the brightly painted boats and the strange cooking smells. And Narcissa would crouch there, hanging off her sisters every word, until the bath water went cold and the skin on Bellatrix's fingertips wrinkled like an old lady's.
"Bedtime," their mother would say, tucking Narcissa in beside Andromeda, and wrapping the white sheets around them. Andromeda always fell asleep straight away, but Narcissa would wriggle herself out from under the blankets again and crawl into bed with Bellatrix, pleading for more stories, and burying her face into her sister's neck to look for those colours and scents and people she was sure she would never know.
--
College boys have always impressed Narcissa, with their affected airs, their pockets full of money from Daddy, and their tendency to discuss politics as if they understood it all. That's the way young men ought to behave. Narcissa has plenty of airs, though she carries them off far better than any of the boys do. Daddy always keeps her piggy bank well stocked, and she has no desire to try and comprehend any sort of politics. They don't interest her, and she shouldn't care for the boys any more than she would for a beggar in the street if that were all they talked about.
Truth be told, Narcissa finds some of them to be rather crass. Particularly the ones that Bellatrix spends time with. Andromeda had laughed when Narcissa mentioned this, but Narcissa knows only too well of all the time Andromeda sneaks off to spend with her boyfriend, the son of the caretaker at Magdalene. Narcissa has met him once; he shook her hand politely and asked her to call him Ted. She remembers thinking him far more polite than most of the young men to attend that college, and wonders what his father might be like. Of course, manners don't matter that much to Mummy and Daddy. Nor intelligence either, for he was bright enough to win himself a scholarship whilst half his classmates had to buy their way in. But Mr and Mrs Black don't want someone smart or even overly polite for their daughters. All they'd care about is that poor Ted hasn't tuppence to rub together.
Bellatrix has recently acquired a particularly philosophical group whom she accompanies to bars and parties, and all sorts of places their mother would faint to think of her sweet little daughter going into with a swathe of half-drunken men. There are lots of things that mother doesn't know about her girls. Bella smokes cigarettes these days; Narcissa can taste them on her lips when she comes home at night. Her dress is always shaped snugly around her bosom and her smooth waist. She looks like a film star. Narcissa is still far too slim-hipped and flat-chested. Still waiting to fill out at fifteen. Some of the boys tease her, say that she needs a good pair of hands on her before she can become a real woman. Narcissa doesn't want their dirty fingers touching her; she's saving herself for someone worthy.
This illusionary figure makes an appearance one afternoon in the form of one Lucius Malfoy, an acquaintance of Bella's - a very dear friend, it seems, of one of her many admirers. Rodolphus Lestrange is a foreign student. French, Narcissa believes. No doubt the son of someone very rich. The three of them arrive one afternoon in time for tea, and afterwards insist on Narcissa accompanying them to the river so that they might all go out punting together.
Lestrange recites French love poetry to Bella in an accent that thickens as he goes on speaking. She sits back in the boat, sunning herself like a reptile, unconcerned as his monologue continues unabated for an immeasurable amount of time. Malfoy says very little to Narcissa as he propels their little boat along the river, keeping pace with Lestrange and smiling to himself as if remembering a story from another day. Occasionally Bellatrix will whisper comments over to her little sister, and Narcissa will blush from watching her sister's full lips moving and gaze over at the bank instead.
When Bella's companions escort them home once more, Lucius leaves Narcissa with a smile and a brush of his lips over her knuckles, while Lestrange laughs his odd, grating laugh and makes Bella promise to call the following day. Narcissa thinks about Lucius when she's tucked up in bed that night. He isn't like the rest of the clutch of starlings Bella calls friends, he has poise.
--
Narcissa's first kiss was not from Lucius Malfoy, or the boy who used to walk her home from church, or even one of her silly cousins. She was fourteen, and lying in bed with her sister's arm about her waist. And it was all she could do not to picture the purple bruise on that soft thigh, or Bella's mouth opening to the college boy's, or the way her dotted skirts had frothed and simmered around the tops of her legs.
"When you grow up-" Bellatrix had whispered, and Narcissa had almost hated her then.
She didn't want to grow up if this was what it meant; her sister always running, running as far and as fast as she could, and Narcissa struggling even to follow behind. She would never catch up.
"You'll understand then, Cissy."
Narcissa hadn't thought she was crying, but Bellatrix's fingers smudged the tears on her cheekbones, and then her sister was rolling her over and kissing the tears from her face, mouth slick against her damp eyelids and the crease where her nostril curved into her cheek. She was too shy to lift her head and try to kiss Bellatrix back; too afraid to do the wrong thing and hear that mocking laugh that Bella always reserved for the servant or for Andromeda. But she didn't resist when Bella pressed their lips together, still hot and salty and hopelessly honest.
"You'll understand," Bella had whispered again, pulling Narcissa to her and stroking her little sister's hair. Narcissa wasn't sure she would, but she just nodded and curled her damp face into Bella's neck.
--
The announcement of the engagement comes on a rainy afternoon in March. Narcissa stares at her sister while her parents smile and shake hands and congratulate the pair. They all speak proudly of the first wedding in the family, and don't speak about Andromeda, who eloped with her Ted only months before. Narcissa supposed that the whole affair with Bellatrix and Lestrange was a passing fancy, a much deeper affection on his part than her sister's. She'd never expected Bella to go through with an engagement. Bellatrix meets her eyes and she smiles, but it looks hollow. Her fiancé's fingers close around her elegant shoulders, fingertips digging gently into the gauzy fabric that covers her skin. Narcissa flees.
Outside the rain has begun to beat more fiercely, but Narcissa barely feels its hammering as fat droplets turn her white chiffon dress translucent, sticking it to her skin as she runs barefoot across the lawn and heads for the sanctuary of the summerhouse. Strands of hair cling to her face, and the water shivers slowly down her skin. It is cool in the summerhouse, the weather still too wintry for the little building to be humid, though the windows have begun to dim with condensation. Trembling with cold, Narcissa lays a palm against the glass of one pane.
As she stands there, staring at the dribbles of water running from her wrist and down the window, a palm suddenly meets hers on the other side of the glass. She gasps sharply, and pulls her hand back from the window, and almost immediately the nearest door opens.
"Miss Black?"
Narcissa sighs with relief. "Mister Malfoy."
"Your mother said you'd run into the garden-" he begins, stepping inside, but he pauses when he catches sight of her dress clinging to her skin, revealing the detailed lacing on her underwear.
"Miss Black-"
"Lucius, please," she whispers, taking a step towards him. "My name is Narcissa."
He breathes out slowly, and, smiling, mutters her name back to her.
With trembling fingers, Narcissa reaches for Lucius' hands and places them against the rain-slicked heat of her body.
--
It's Bellatrix who catches her on the way back to the house, and Narcissa isn't sure whether to be pleased or afraid. She's just stepped in through the back door, wiping her feet on the mat to shake off the strands of wet grass, when a rustle of shifting cloth announces Bella's presence seconds before she strikes.
"Looking a little worse for wear, aren't you?" says Bella, pinning Narcissa back against the cold stone wall and running a finger down her flushed cheek. "Been for a swim?"
"Let me go," says Narcissa calmly.
"Where's that charming young man of yours?"
"I don't know who you mean."
"Oh, but Lucius came out to look for you. Most gallant, I must say. Didn't you see him?"
Narcissa shakes her head, but before she can say anything Bellatrix is fumbling with the awkward folds of her wet dress, pulling them up to her thighs. For a moment, Bellatrix looks straight at Narcissa, and there's no love in that gaze at all. Narcissa recognises it as the way Lestrange looks at Bella; as if she's a piece of property to be owned. Bellatrix is not careful with her sister. Her fingers are sharp and unkind as she tears aside Narcissa's hastily rearranged underwear and digs two cruel fingers inside her. Narcissa whines at the renewed pain and tries to struggle away from Bellatrix's hands, but she can't escape.
Bellatrix doesn't speak again, but looks at her sister in disgust as she removes her hand and wipes her fingers on Narcissa's cheek., smearing it with semen. Silently, she turns to make her way back into the living room to flirt with her greasy fiancé.
--
When Narcissa holds her son in her arms for the first time; a perfect silvery-blond miniature of his parents, she smiles. At least in one thing she will never be left behind by her sister.
--
Recipient: kethlenda
Pairing: Narcissa gen (Bellatrix/Narcissa, Lucius/Narcissa)
Rating: R
Warnings: Incest
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Bellatrix has never belonged to Narcissa. As she grows older, Narcissa comes to realise she never will. Muggle AU.
Notes: I am sorry that you had to receive your gift so horrendously late, but I sincerely hope it's worth the wait. You deserve much better.
Bellatrix is seventeen. Narcissa runs after her one night when she leaves with her friends to haunt the dance halls and student pubs; Bellatrix has forgotten her bag, and Narcissa slips her shoes on and hurries along the street to catch her sister and her giggling friends. She finds them on the corner near the chemist's, their hands planted on their hips as they laugh, bending at the hip like hinges. As she watches, Bella ducks into an alleyway, the bright bouncing skirt of her polka dot dress spinning around her legs as she disappears.
Clutching the bag to her chest, Narcissa creeps forward, not edging too close to Bella's friends as she wouldn't approve if she thought Narcissa had been talking to them. The mouth of the alley gapes, rough and crumbling, and lined with dirty day-old newsprint. Narcissa is careful as she peers round, it wouldn't do to get caught, but she can't help the little gasp when she sees Bella pressed up against the filthy wall, the frills of her skirt up around her thighs as the hand of one of the college lads edges up her leg.
Blushing furiously, Narcissa hurries away again, past the girls practising their dance steps, their feet stamping stars from the pavement. She hurries all the way home, her feet soon sore from running in her pretty shoes, because they were Andromeda's and they pinch at the toe. The bag she tosses down in the hallway, and dashes upstairs to bury her face in Bella's pillow, the scent of her perfume still thick in the air. Music from a wireless drifts in through the open window.
She shouldn't be surprised. She certainly shouldn't be upset. Narcissa curls herself around the pillow and eventually falls asleep, and she doesn't wake up until Bella finally stumbles in. It's gone midnight, and her dress smells of smoke and cologne. Her lipstick is smudged and a fat dirty purple bruise sits smugly on the inside of her left thigh.
"You forgot your bag tonight," whispers Narcissa.
"I know." Bellatrix stretches languidly, like a cat, and then slips a hand around Narcissa's waist and pulls her closer. "You're an angel. You didn't need to bring it."
--
When they were children, Bellatrix would run down to the river each day in summer, to fight with the gypsy children in the claypits. Narcissa was always too young to go, and Andromeda refused to join in such silly, common games. So the two youngest stayed at home and had tea parties in the garden, and pretend not to notice the absence of their sister until she would finally roll in the back door in time for tea, filthy and breathless from her adventures.
After dinner, Bellatrix would be sent straight for a bath, and Narcissa would sit beside her and try to catch the smell of the river off her sister's hair before it was washed away. Bellatrix would splash her with the bath water, and tell her strange stories of the urchins and the river children, of the brightly painted boats and the strange cooking smells. And Narcissa would crouch there, hanging off her sisters every word, until the bath water went cold and the skin on Bellatrix's fingertips wrinkled like an old lady's.
"Bedtime," their mother would say, tucking Narcissa in beside Andromeda, and wrapping the white sheets around them. Andromeda always fell asleep straight away, but Narcissa would wriggle herself out from under the blankets again and crawl into bed with Bellatrix, pleading for more stories, and burying her face into her sister's neck to look for those colours and scents and people she was sure she would never know.
--
College boys have always impressed Narcissa, with their affected airs, their pockets full of money from Daddy, and their tendency to discuss politics as if they understood it all. That's the way young men ought to behave. Narcissa has plenty of airs, though she carries them off far better than any of the boys do. Daddy always keeps her piggy bank well stocked, and she has no desire to try and comprehend any sort of politics. They don't interest her, and she shouldn't care for the boys any more than she would for a beggar in the street if that were all they talked about.
Truth be told, Narcissa finds some of them to be rather crass. Particularly the ones that Bellatrix spends time with. Andromeda had laughed when Narcissa mentioned this, but Narcissa knows only too well of all the time Andromeda sneaks off to spend with her boyfriend, the son of the caretaker at Magdalene. Narcissa has met him once; he shook her hand politely and asked her to call him Ted. She remembers thinking him far more polite than most of the young men to attend that college, and wonders what his father might be like. Of course, manners don't matter that much to Mummy and Daddy. Nor intelligence either, for he was bright enough to win himself a scholarship whilst half his classmates had to buy their way in. But Mr and Mrs Black don't want someone smart or even overly polite for their daughters. All they'd care about is that poor Ted hasn't tuppence to rub together.
Bellatrix has recently acquired a particularly philosophical group whom she accompanies to bars and parties, and all sorts of places their mother would faint to think of her sweet little daughter going into with a swathe of half-drunken men. There are lots of things that mother doesn't know about her girls. Bella smokes cigarettes these days; Narcissa can taste them on her lips when she comes home at night. Her dress is always shaped snugly around her bosom and her smooth waist. She looks like a film star. Narcissa is still far too slim-hipped and flat-chested. Still waiting to fill out at fifteen. Some of the boys tease her, say that she needs a good pair of hands on her before she can become a real woman. Narcissa doesn't want their dirty fingers touching her; she's saving herself for someone worthy.
This illusionary figure makes an appearance one afternoon in the form of one Lucius Malfoy, an acquaintance of Bella's - a very dear friend, it seems, of one of her many admirers. Rodolphus Lestrange is a foreign student. French, Narcissa believes. No doubt the son of someone very rich. The three of them arrive one afternoon in time for tea, and afterwards insist on Narcissa accompanying them to the river so that they might all go out punting together.
Lestrange recites French love poetry to Bella in an accent that thickens as he goes on speaking. She sits back in the boat, sunning herself like a reptile, unconcerned as his monologue continues unabated for an immeasurable amount of time. Malfoy says very little to Narcissa as he propels their little boat along the river, keeping pace with Lestrange and smiling to himself as if remembering a story from another day. Occasionally Bellatrix will whisper comments over to her little sister, and Narcissa will blush from watching her sister's full lips moving and gaze over at the bank instead.
When Bella's companions escort them home once more, Lucius leaves Narcissa with a smile and a brush of his lips over her knuckles, while Lestrange laughs his odd, grating laugh and makes Bella promise to call the following day. Narcissa thinks about Lucius when she's tucked up in bed that night. He isn't like the rest of the clutch of starlings Bella calls friends, he has poise.
--
Narcissa's first kiss was not from Lucius Malfoy, or the boy who used to walk her home from church, or even one of her silly cousins. She was fourteen, and lying in bed with her sister's arm about her waist. And it was all she could do not to picture the purple bruise on that soft thigh, or Bella's mouth opening to the college boy's, or the way her dotted skirts had frothed and simmered around the tops of her legs.
"When you grow up-" Bellatrix had whispered, and Narcissa had almost hated her then.
She didn't want to grow up if this was what it meant; her sister always running, running as far and as fast as she could, and Narcissa struggling even to follow behind. She would never catch up.
"You'll understand then, Cissy."
Narcissa hadn't thought she was crying, but Bellatrix's fingers smudged the tears on her cheekbones, and then her sister was rolling her over and kissing the tears from her face, mouth slick against her damp eyelids and the crease where her nostril curved into her cheek. She was too shy to lift her head and try to kiss Bellatrix back; too afraid to do the wrong thing and hear that mocking laugh that Bella always reserved for the servant or for Andromeda. But she didn't resist when Bella pressed their lips together, still hot and salty and hopelessly honest.
"You'll understand," Bella had whispered again, pulling Narcissa to her and stroking her little sister's hair. Narcissa wasn't sure she would, but she just nodded and curled her damp face into Bella's neck.
--
The announcement of the engagement comes on a rainy afternoon in March. Narcissa stares at her sister while her parents smile and shake hands and congratulate the pair. They all speak proudly of the first wedding in the family, and don't speak about Andromeda, who eloped with her Ted only months before. Narcissa supposed that the whole affair with Bellatrix and Lestrange was a passing fancy, a much deeper affection on his part than her sister's. She'd never expected Bella to go through with an engagement. Bellatrix meets her eyes and she smiles, but it looks hollow. Her fiancé's fingers close around her elegant shoulders, fingertips digging gently into the gauzy fabric that covers her skin. Narcissa flees.
Outside the rain has begun to beat more fiercely, but Narcissa barely feels its hammering as fat droplets turn her white chiffon dress translucent, sticking it to her skin as she runs barefoot across the lawn and heads for the sanctuary of the summerhouse. Strands of hair cling to her face, and the water shivers slowly down her skin. It is cool in the summerhouse, the weather still too wintry for the little building to be humid, though the windows have begun to dim with condensation. Trembling with cold, Narcissa lays a palm against the glass of one pane.
As she stands there, staring at the dribbles of water running from her wrist and down the window, a palm suddenly meets hers on the other side of the glass. She gasps sharply, and pulls her hand back from the window, and almost immediately the nearest door opens.
"Miss Black?"
Narcissa sighs with relief. "Mister Malfoy."
"Your mother said you'd run into the garden-" he begins, stepping inside, but he pauses when he catches sight of her dress clinging to her skin, revealing the detailed lacing on her underwear.
"Miss Black-"
"Lucius, please," she whispers, taking a step towards him. "My name is Narcissa."
He breathes out slowly, and, smiling, mutters her name back to her.
With trembling fingers, Narcissa reaches for Lucius' hands and places them against the rain-slicked heat of her body.
--
It's Bellatrix who catches her on the way back to the house, and Narcissa isn't sure whether to be pleased or afraid. She's just stepped in through the back door, wiping her feet on the mat to shake off the strands of wet grass, when a rustle of shifting cloth announces Bella's presence seconds before she strikes.
"Looking a little worse for wear, aren't you?" says Bella, pinning Narcissa back against the cold stone wall and running a finger down her flushed cheek. "Been for a swim?"
"Let me go," says Narcissa calmly.
"Where's that charming young man of yours?"
"I don't know who you mean."
"Oh, but Lucius came out to look for you. Most gallant, I must say. Didn't you see him?"
Narcissa shakes her head, but before she can say anything Bellatrix is fumbling with the awkward folds of her wet dress, pulling them up to her thighs. For a moment, Bellatrix looks straight at Narcissa, and there's no love in that gaze at all. Narcissa recognises it as the way Lestrange looks at Bella; as if she's a piece of property to be owned. Bellatrix is not careful with her sister. Her fingers are sharp and unkind as she tears aside Narcissa's hastily rearranged underwear and digs two cruel fingers inside her. Narcissa whines at the renewed pain and tries to struggle away from Bellatrix's hands, but she can't escape.
Bellatrix doesn't speak again, but looks at her sister in disgust as she removes her hand and wipes her fingers on Narcissa's cheek., smearing it with semen. Silently, she turns to make her way back into the living room to flirt with her greasy fiancé.
--
When Narcissa holds her son in her arms for the first time; a perfect silvery-blond miniature of his parents, she smiles. At least in one thing she will never be left behind by her sister.
--