Ego Te Absolvo
Title: Ego Te Absolvo
Author: Sionnain
Pairing: Bellatrix/Sirius, implied Bellatrix/Regulus and Regulus/Sirius
Rating: MA
Word Count: 3536
Warnings: Breathplay, incest (of the Blackcest variety!), blasphemy. (Please note: it is not my intention to mock anyone's religion.)
Summary: They say confession is good for the soul. Sirius isn't so sure about that, but that could be because Bellatrix hasn't got one.
Author's Notes: Written for Tinkerpixy, who wanted: Sirius/Bellatrix. Manipulation, mindfuck, non-con, knifeplay, any kinks are good. There's no knifeplay but I hope I at least got the mindfuck part in, haha. I really hope you like this!
Thanks to my wonderful betas, Jazzypom and Kaz814, as usual, for their wonderful work, and Jazzypom esp. for filling me in on some Anglican customs.
Thanks to Srichard for answering questions for me on the Sacrament of Confession.
Ego Te Absolvo
Confession heals, confession justifies, confession grants pardon of sin, all hope consists in confession; in confession there is a chance for mercy. --St. Isidore of Seville
Sulky thunderhead clouds hung low in the grey autumnal sky, rain throwing a tantrum of tears on the parade of black-clad mourners who were ushering silently into the church, clutching sodden bunches of flowers and whispering quietly amongst themselves. They’d turned out in droves, it seemed, despite the rain, to see Regulus Back to the hereafter.
If rain had not been so common in Northern England, Sirius might have thought it ironic the skies wept for his brother when he himself could not. He stood in the front of the church, silent, next to his tearful mother in her ridiculously large, ornate black mourning hat complete with accompanying lace veil. It made her swollen red eyes look funny, as if he was peering at her through some strange black mesh prison. His father stood, resigned and proud, as if he’d sneer down his nose at God himself should He happen to show up.
Sirius didn’t think he would. He rather figured God had given up on the Blacks long ago.
Regulus’ funeral was held in the stone Victorian church perched on a hill in Sutton Lanes End. Sirius hated the church-it sat stiffly on the dead grass, with the straight clean lines and thin, sharp windows suggesting disapproval, as if the church was turning up its rather pointy nose at the service being held within. The interior was no better, all staid and perfectly proper for the ultimate in refined Anglican aesthetics. The same clean lines from the exterior graced the nave of the building; suggesting a Victorian rejection of overdone gothic sensuality, as if a curve somewhere would be too blasphemous and sensual to appear in a church.
And yet in the mahogany casket on the altar, lies a murderer with a white rose in his hands.
Sirius has not gone to look in the casket since they first arrived, when his mother put the rose in Regulus’ stiff, cold hands, posed in that perfunctory position across his chest. She’d leaned down to kiss him, through that horrible veil; Sirius could not watch.
His eyes had drifted from his mother bent over her dead son to Regulus’ arms, clad in fine black wizard robes for burial. Part of him wanted to push up the fabric and expose that damning symbol carved into his pallid flesh.
Let them see it, Mother. So they’ll know. So they can see it, and know to whom they’ve come to pay their last respects. He doesn’t deserve it. He betrayed them. He betrayed us all.
He betrayed me.
He was touched that James, Lily, Peter and Remus had come, even though they had not known his brother. Peter hated to be there, that was plain to see-he kept his shoulders hunched and moved quickly through the crowd, head bowed and small eyes darting about anxiously. Lily placed a hand on his arm and made a soft, soothing sound, and he gave her a brief nod but said nothing. His eyes gave his thanks, but it wasn’t because she came that he was grateful.
It was because she was a shimmering jewel in an ocean of blackness, her red hair standing out in sharp relief against the grey sky and the muted brown stones. His friends had a force about them that seemed to repel the gloom of the church; but as they moved on they took it with them, leaving him drained, even more so than before they’d arrived so that he wished for one petulant moment that they’d never come.
Sirius had been staring after his friends, wishing for a little of their warmth, and so he missed the last of the mourners straggling in the church. His cousins.
They were the last to arrive-as he would have expected- a full five minutes after the service had been set to begin. Andromeda, the exiled one, not among them, and he rather thought if she had been, they’d have been on time.
A slight smile curved his lips at that.
Narcissa Black fit in so well with the demeanor of the church he wondered if it would allow her to leave. Her blonde hair was twisted up into a fashionable knot, not a strand out of place. She wore robes of ice blue silk-rather fitting-and pale, white kidskin leather gloves. She’d look perfect in an alcove, votive candles flickering in tiny blue jars at her feet, throwing all that cold beauty into shadowy relief.
“Sirius.”
Her voice was just as refined as her breeding, light and soft as a whisper, chilly enough to denote her disdain for him. She pressed her cheek, to his. On feeling the cool dampness of it he vaguely wondered how she’d managed not to get her blonde hair wet.
“Narcissa. Thank you for coming,” he added, but only because it would annoy her. It did; a tiny line appeared at the edge of her lips and she nodded brusquely, moving past him into the sanctuary. He followed her progress as the church swallowed her up, how she moved past James and the others without a word to them. She sat in the pew, ramrod straight, hands folded in lap and ankles perfectly crossed.
“Hullo, cousin.” Husky with amusement, it was the voice of a woman who had set his teeth on edge since they’d learned how to talk.
Sirius turned slowly from his observation of Narcissa, and felt a fine tremor of rage sluice through his veins. How dare she come here…?
Bellatrix Black, soon to be Lestrange, her dark hair unbound and soaking wet, stood staring at him with that trace of amusement in her dark eyes that always made him furious.
Unlike her sister, she’d done nothing to save herself from the deluge outside. Her damp hair was plastered to her face, which gave her a decidedly sinister appearance as it molded to her skull. She’d worn bright red lipstick that perfectly matched her crimson dress, which overlaid her curves with sinful ease.
If Narcissa was the Madonna, cold and remote and hidden in the alcove amongst her glittering candles, then Bellatrix was the Magdalene, inappropriate and sensual in the midst of so much restrained propriety.
“What are you doing here?”
His mother was being escorted to the front of the church to begin the service, his father having placed a stiff hand at her back. They did not hear Sirius’ vitriolic words-or, rather, they chose to ignore them, as they so often did. His parents excelled at ignoring that which they did not wish to see; the proof of it lay dead in the casket at the front of the church.
Bellatrix laughed, making no effort to do so quietly. The sound bounced off the stone walls and caused heads to turn towards them with disparaging stares; his mother was glaring at him, angry, and he fancied he could feel the heat of her wrathful look from where she sat.
His cousin moved past him, intent upon finding her place, and walked up the central aisle with as much regal poise as a queen approaching her coronation. She left water in her wake, staining the floor, as she moved to find her seat.
***
He wanted to think about his brother, during the service, but he couldn’t.
Instead he thought about her.
Because, as he knew very well, it was her fault his brother was dead. Bellatrix had seduced Regulus with more than her voluptuous body; she had twined him around every fiber of her being with her honeyed promises and poisonous intentions, and Regulus had been lost to her. He could not have known, until it was too late, how intricate a web she was capable of spinning.
The service was trite, boring, cold and utterly without feeling.
You would hate this, Reg. Of course, wasn’t it true that everyone would hate his or her funeral? It wasn’t for the dead, after all, these murmured litanies and empty prayers. It was for those who were left behind; to offer some comfort that in death one finds their final redemption.
I hope you’ve found redemption, Regulus. None of us have.
When it was over, there was only the burial left. The priest murmured a few words and left the family to say their final goodbyes before the casket was closed and taken to the gravesite. Sirius approached with his mother and father, looking straight ahead as the mourners passed by.
Before the end, his mother and father left the sanctuary. Sirius remained next to the casket as the rest finished, pressing insincere kisses to his cheek or clasping his hands and promising to do whatever he and his family needed during “this dark time.”
Sirius nodded and tried not to laugh, but it was difficult to choke down the hysteria that bubbled up in his throat; he had to bite his lip and dig his short nails into his palm to stop himself from giving vent to it.
She was the last one through the line, and he met her eyes with a challenging glare. She spared him but a glance before she leaned over the casket, and to his surprise, whispered something in his brother’s ear before standing up. With a toss of her hair, she moved into the shadows and he saw her light a candle in the alcove near the altar, ignoring the small sign asking for donations.
It was this small slight to the church that infuriated him, more than anything else. With a snarl, Sirius bounded over to her and grabbed her arm in his own, very roughly. “What the hell is the matter with you?”
Bellatrix glared up at him, the light from the candles swimming in her eyes and causing her black gaze to burn. “I’m not the one acting mad,” she said, twisting out of his grasp.
“What did you ask for?” Sirius queried, nodding his head towards the candle she’d lit. “And you’re supposed to pay for one of those,” he said churlishly.
Bellatrix stared up at the muted lights of the stained glass window. “None of your business, Sirius. Leave me alone.” Her tone was coolly dismissive, as if he were an errant house-elf who’d brought her morning tea a shade too cold.
He shoved her, hard, against the rough wall. “What did you tell my brother, you bitch? What are you lighting a candle for? Feel sorry for what you dragged him into, do you? Too late now, Bella,” he snarled, hands wrapping vise-like around her upper arms. It felt good to squeeze and hurt her; the pain that simmered below the surface of his being needed an outlet. “He’s dead.”
“Surprised you noticed.” Bellatrix’s voice lost that husky, almost otherworldly quality; it hardened like molten sand being shaped into glass under the glazier’s fire.
Sirius was incensed, and the anger was restorative, like a tonic. He slapped her, hard, across the mouth so that her head snapped back with the force of it, the sound echoing through the sanctuary like the crack of a single-tail whip. “Bitch. Shut the fuck up. This is your fault.”
She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and sucked at it like it was a piece of candy, sweet and succulent. “My fault?”
Sirius was entranced by the sight of Bellatrix rhythmically pulling on her cherry-red lips, stained crimson from lipstick and blood and sin. He leaned forward imperceptibly, wanting to frighten her. “What’d you do, Bellatrix, fuck him to make him join up?”
She smirked, and the twisting of her lips into a sneer seemed somehow unholy in the church. He moved closer, crowding her, until they were nose-to-nose. The air between them sparked with their magic and that ineffable something that made them Blacks-centuries of breeding and darker aspirations staining their skin and infusing the air with the hot, sticky thickness of unbridled hate.
“Jealous?” Bellatrix had a purr that would make a saint blush. It sounded like pure wickedness vibrating in the empty cavity that was her chest, unencumbered by a heart as he imagined she was.
“Of you?” He sniffed disdainfully. “Hardly.” They were so close he could smell her; the sweetly innocent scent of vanilla battling with the musky earthiness of myrrh, wafting like incense through the alcove. He could feel the heat of her body, burning through her still-damp clothes like the flame of the candles behind him. Those small candles represented the prayers of the penitent; hers was the flame that beckoned the sinner home to hell.
“No. That I had him, of course. And you didn’t.” She licked her lips and it was too much; he was overcome at last.
“Know that for a fact, do you?” The words tumbled from his lips in an unwanted confession; if there had been a priest there, he’d even now be on his knees, reciting the Lord’s Prayer in some desperate attempt for contrition for that admission.
Her laughter sounded like the devil himself had left hell to come dance in the hallowed shadows of the church. “Oh, cousin. How delightful.” She pressed herself against him, arms snaking up to wrap around his neck. “We’ve shared the same lover, have we?”
He was staring at her, the temptation of her with her apple-red mouth, without the desire to tell her to get thee behind him, as one was supposed to do with the devil. “Bitch,” he whispered again, but the word was without his usual heat. He captured her mouth with his, hating her that she was right, and wanting-for one absurd, ridiculous moment-to be close to her because Regulus had been.
“Hate you, hate you, hate you,” Sirius chanted those two words like a litany as he tore at her inappropriately red dress robes. They lay eventually in a puddle at her feet, like a pretty puddle of blood, like she was some martyr whose blood had been spilt for something greater than herself.
Nothing could be further from the truth, as the Mark burned into her skin testified.
“I can tell,” Bellatrix said, rubbing herself against him. Her hand reached down and grabbed his erection, rubbing her palm over it. “Going to give me holy communion, are you?”
He took her mouth again, mainly so she’d stop talking, but she bit with her sharp little teeth until he tasted his own blood.
“There, I gave it to you. In nomini patris et filii et spiritus sanctus,” she muttered, and he shoved her back against the wall, the copper smear of blood filling his mouth.
Her heady scent wrapped cloud-like around him while her moans in his ear sounded like a chant as he fucked her hard against the church wall, hidden in the shadows. Somewhere, the bells began to ring, and he thought the sound vibrated in his head and made him crazed.
“Didn’t want to do it,” she moaned, head forced back on the hard stone wall, hitting with such force he was surprised she didn’t faint from the contact.
He bit her, hard, smearing blood on her paleflower flesh. Her long legs were wrapped tight around his waist, and she was surprisingly passive as he fucked her with all the pent-up rage screaming in his soul.
“What’d you pray for?” He pulled back enough to watch her face as he shoved himself inside her; he didn’t caress her other than that one bite; didn’t stroke her full breasts, pressed so enticingly against his heaving chest.
He gave her nothing but the sure, angry stroke of his cock, the furious glare of his face as he scowled down into her upturned one. Her eyes were clenched shut, as if she were blocking his face from her memory.
She arched herself into him, claw-like talons digging into his shoulders. “You want to know, cousin?” she panted, and instead of horrifying him, the reminder of their kinship pushed him further to the very edges of his sanity.
One of his arms braced at her throat, and he pressed it slowly against her, stealing her breath. He could feel the pulse of her blood fluttering under his fingers, becoming irregular and spastic under the subtle pressure he exerted upon her delicate throat. He felt as dizzy and lightheaded as she must have as he continued, and he saw truth for the first time in her eyes - that he could kill her, and that she wanted him to, and that she would not fight him if he chose to try. She’d die by his hands, there in the alcove, and maybe that was what she had prayed for all along.
It was almost as tempting to do it as it had been to give in and fuck her, and as the blood struggled to rush up to his head, thwarted by gravity, he felt himself falling into dizziness even as her muscles relaxed beneath him. So easy to kill her…the power he had over her in that moment was more intoxicating than wine, headier than lust.
At the moment when she would have slid into the enfolding darkness of unconsciousness, he stopped abruptly, so that the air rushed back into her lungs and she gulped, eyes wild, staring at him with a mixture of relief and hatred on her face, which was pinkened with renewed blood where before it had been deathly pale. Her gaze glimmered with unshed tears, dark crystals in her fathomless eyes.
“I asked for forgiveness,” she choked, and he was near to throwing her away from him in disgust and forgetting all of this. He was disgusted with himself, with her, and his brother was being buried and what was he doing, fucking his cousin in the church.
“You sicken me,” he snarled, and went to toss her aside, throw her down to join her red silk robes at their feet.
“Oh, no, Sirius,” she snapped, and her legs tightened around his waist as she rubbed herself against him tantalizingly. Her body was warm and soft and wet, and he hated himself, but he started thrusting again, mindlessly seeking release. “You’ll finish this.”
He ignored her, pushing towards completion, ignoring the bite of her nails and her whimpering moans, and his brother’s name as it tumbled shamefully from her lips, a mortal sin to speak it so, and he didn’t care, was fucking her against the wall until his mind slipped away, until he found absolution, until he no longer cared…
So close…his cock dragged in and out of her, painfully, rhythmically. If she just kept her mouth shut, he’d forget who she was, and there’d be a moment’s forgetfulness before a lifetime of horrified remembrance at what he’d done…
Bless me, father, for I have sinned…
“Don’t you…want to know why…?”
Her voice was roughened and dark, like she shattered the glass beside them and eaten heaping handfuls of it. It sounded torn and ripped from whatever was left of her soul. He didn’t like the way it caressed him, the way it made him push his hips forward and drive himself harder into her clinging, tempting little body.
The mistake was easy to make. He did not remember who she was, in his quest to think of her only as a willing receptacle for lust, a way to feel life as he was surrounded by death and sorrow. He should have been thinking, should have known better than to give in, to give her what she wanted…
“No, don’t care…”
She was climbing him like ivy on the church façade, and her mouth was very close to his ear.
“I did it, Sirius. I killed him.”
The words fell around him with dreadful finality, like the mournful ring of the church bells, or the handful of dirt that was surely hitting his brother’s coffin in the churchyard as they buried him.
At the same instant he stilled, horrified, she tightened her inner muscles around his cock and clenched him tight, surrounding him with all that wanton evil and delicious sin that made up her very being. He could not have stopped it, though he cried out in pure anguish as he came within her, as he felt her orgasm match his own.
He shoved her away when it was over. She fell atop her silk robes, black hair askew and his come smeared on her thighs, blood and shadows of bruises staining the delicate hollows of her collarbones. He did up his trousers and spoke a cleansing charm in a harsh voice, leaving her there bathed by the muted colors of the stained glass window as the weak afternoon sun shone through at last, breaking through the clouds as if giving his brother one final, sunbright kiss goodbye.
They were gone, the lot of them, when he finally found his brother’s grave. He fell next to the damp mound of dirt, crying the tears he’d been unable to shed at last, as he remembered her final words, whispered in a satisfied voice as he left her there.
Ego te absolvo.
Author: Sionnain
Pairing: Bellatrix/Sirius, implied Bellatrix/Regulus and Regulus/Sirius
Rating: MA
Word Count: 3536
Warnings: Breathplay, incest (of the Blackcest variety!), blasphemy. (Please note: it is not my intention to mock anyone's religion.)
Summary: They say confession is good for the soul. Sirius isn't so sure about that, but that could be because Bellatrix hasn't got one.
Author's Notes: Written for Tinkerpixy, who wanted: Sirius/Bellatrix. Manipulation, mindfuck, non-con, knifeplay, any kinks are good. There's no knifeplay but I hope I at least got the mindfuck part in, haha. I really hope you like this!
Thanks to my wonderful betas, Jazzypom and Kaz814, as usual, for their wonderful work, and Jazzypom esp. for filling me in on some Anglican customs.
Thanks to Srichard for answering questions for me on the Sacrament of Confession.
Ego Te Absolvo
Confession heals, confession justifies, confession grants pardon of sin, all hope consists in confession; in confession there is a chance for mercy. --St. Isidore of Seville
Sulky thunderhead clouds hung low in the grey autumnal sky, rain throwing a tantrum of tears on the parade of black-clad mourners who were ushering silently into the church, clutching sodden bunches of flowers and whispering quietly amongst themselves. They’d turned out in droves, it seemed, despite the rain, to see Regulus Back to the hereafter.
If rain had not been so common in Northern England, Sirius might have thought it ironic the skies wept for his brother when he himself could not. He stood in the front of the church, silent, next to his tearful mother in her ridiculously large, ornate black mourning hat complete with accompanying lace veil. It made her swollen red eyes look funny, as if he was peering at her through some strange black mesh prison. His father stood, resigned and proud, as if he’d sneer down his nose at God himself should He happen to show up.
Sirius didn’t think he would. He rather figured God had given up on the Blacks long ago.
Regulus’ funeral was held in the stone Victorian church perched on a hill in Sutton Lanes End. Sirius hated the church-it sat stiffly on the dead grass, with the straight clean lines and thin, sharp windows suggesting disapproval, as if the church was turning up its rather pointy nose at the service being held within. The interior was no better, all staid and perfectly proper for the ultimate in refined Anglican aesthetics. The same clean lines from the exterior graced the nave of the building; suggesting a Victorian rejection of overdone gothic sensuality, as if a curve somewhere would be too blasphemous and sensual to appear in a church.
And yet in the mahogany casket on the altar, lies a murderer with a white rose in his hands.
Sirius has not gone to look in the casket since they first arrived, when his mother put the rose in Regulus’ stiff, cold hands, posed in that perfunctory position across his chest. She’d leaned down to kiss him, through that horrible veil; Sirius could not watch.
His eyes had drifted from his mother bent over her dead son to Regulus’ arms, clad in fine black wizard robes for burial. Part of him wanted to push up the fabric and expose that damning symbol carved into his pallid flesh.
Let them see it, Mother. So they’ll know. So they can see it, and know to whom they’ve come to pay their last respects. He doesn’t deserve it. He betrayed them. He betrayed us all.
He betrayed me.
He was touched that James, Lily, Peter and Remus had come, even though they had not known his brother. Peter hated to be there, that was plain to see-he kept his shoulders hunched and moved quickly through the crowd, head bowed and small eyes darting about anxiously. Lily placed a hand on his arm and made a soft, soothing sound, and he gave her a brief nod but said nothing. His eyes gave his thanks, but it wasn’t because she came that he was grateful.
It was because she was a shimmering jewel in an ocean of blackness, her red hair standing out in sharp relief against the grey sky and the muted brown stones. His friends had a force about them that seemed to repel the gloom of the church; but as they moved on they took it with them, leaving him drained, even more so than before they’d arrived so that he wished for one petulant moment that they’d never come.
Sirius had been staring after his friends, wishing for a little of their warmth, and so he missed the last of the mourners straggling in the church. His cousins.
They were the last to arrive-as he would have expected- a full five minutes after the service had been set to begin. Andromeda, the exiled one, not among them, and he rather thought if she had been, they’d have been on time.
A slight smile curved his lips at that.
Narcissa Black fit in so well with the demeanor of the church he wondered if it would allow her to leave. Her blonde hair was twisted up into a fashionable knot, not a strand out of place. She wore robes of ice blue silk-rather fitting-and pale, white kidskin leather gloves. She’d look perfect in an alcove, votive candles flickering in tiny blue jars at her feet, throwing all that cold beauty into shadowy relief.
“Sirius.”
Her voice was just as refined as her breeding, light and soft as a whisper, chilly enough to denote her disdain for him. She pressed her cheek, to his. On feeling the cool dampness of it he vaguely wondered how she’d managed not to get her blonde hair wet.
“Narcissa. Thank you for coming,” he added, but only because it would annoy her. It did; a tiny line appeared at the edge of her lips and she nodded brusquely, moving past him into the sanctuary. He followed her progress as the church swallowed her up, how she moved past James and the others without a word to them. She sat in the pew, ramrod straight, hands folded in lap and ankles perfectly crossed.
“Hullo, cousin.” Husky with amusement, it was the voice of a woman who had set his teeth on edge since they’d learned how to talk.
Sirius turned slowly from his observation of Narcissa, and felt a fine tremor of rage sluice through his veins. How dare she come here…?
Bellatrix Black, soon to be Lestrange, her dark hair unbound and soaking wet, stood staring at him with that trace of amusement in her dark eyes that always made him furious.
Unlike her sister, she’d done nothing to save herself from the deluge outside. Her damp hair was plastered to her face, which gave her a decidedly sinister appearance as it molded to her skull. She’d worn bright red lipstick that perfectly matched her crimson dress, which overlaid her curves with sinful ease.
If Narcissa was the Madonna, cold and remote and hidden in the alcove amongst her glittering candles, then Bellatrix was the Magdalene, inappropriate and sensual in the midst of so much restrained propriety.
“What are you doing here?”
His mother was being escorted to the front of the church to begin the service, his father having placed a stiff hand at her back. They did not hear Sirius’ vitriolic words-or, rather, they chose to ignore them, as they so often did. His parents excelled at ignoring that which they did not wish to see; the proof of it lay dead in the casket at the front of the church.
Bellatrix laughed, making no effort to do so quietly. The sound bounced off the stone walls and caused heads to turn towards them with disparaging stares; his mother was glaring at him, angry, and he fancied he could feel the heat of her wrathful look from where she sat.
His cousin moved past him, intent upon finding her place, and walked up the central aisle with as much regal poise as a queen approaching her coronation. She left water in her wake, staining the floor, as she moved to find her seat.
***
He wanted to think about his brother, during the service, but he couldn’t.
Instead he thought about her.
Because, as he knew very well, it was her fault his brother was dead. Bellatrix had seduced Regulus with more than her voluptuous body; she had twined him around every fiber of her being with her honeyed promises and poisonous intentions, and Regulus had been lost to her. He could not have known, until it was too late, how intricate a web she was capable of spinning.
The service was trite, boring, cold and utterly without feeling.
You would hate this, Reg. Of course, wasn’t it true that everyone would hate his or her funeral? It wasn’t for the dead, after all, these murmured litanies and empty prayers. It was for those who were left behind; to offer some comfort that in death one finds their final redemption.
I hope you’ve found redemption, Regulus. None of us have.
When it was over, there was only the burial left. The priest murmured a few words and left the family to say their final goodbyes before the casket was closed and taken to the gravesite. Sirius approached with his mother and father, looking straight ahead as the mourners passed by.
Before the end, his mother and father left the sanctuary. Sirius remained next to the casket as the rest finished, pressing insincere kisses to his cheek or clasping his hands and promising to do whatever he and his family needed during “this dark time.”
Sirius nodded and tried not to laugh, but it was difficult to choke down the hysteria that bubbled up in his throat; he had to bite his lip and dig his short nails into his palm to stop himself from giving vent to it.
She was the last one through the line, and he met her eyes with a challenging glare. She spared him but a glance before she leaned over the casket, and to his surprise, whispered something in his brother’s ear before standing up. With a toss of her hair, she moved into the shadows and he saw her light a candle in the alcove near the altar, ignoring the small sign asking for donations.
It was this small slight to the church that infuriated him, more than anything else. With a snarl, Sirius bounded over to her and grabbed her arm in his own, very roughly. “What the hell is the matter with you?”
Bellatrix glared up at him, the light from the candles swimming in her eyes and causing her black gaze to burn. “I’m not the one acting mad,” she said, twisting out of his grasp.
“What did you ask for?” Sirius queried, nodding his head towards the candle she’d lit. “And you’re supposed to pay for one of those,” he said churlishly.
Bellatrix stared up at the muted lights of the stained glass window. “None of your business, Sirius. Leave me alone.” Her tone was coolly dismissive, as if he were an errant house-elf who’d brought her morning tea a shade too cold.
He shoved her, hard, against the rough wall. “What did you tell my brother, you bitch? What are you lighting a candle for? Feel sorry for what you dragged him into, do you? Too late now, Bella,” he snarled, hands wrapping vise-like around her upper arms. It felt good to squeeze and hurt her; the pain that simmered below the surface of his being needed an outlet. “He’s dead.”
“Surprised you noticed.” Bellatrix’s voice lost that husky, almost otherworldly quality; it hardened like molten sand being shaped into glass under the glazier’s fire.
Sirius was incensed, and the anger was restorative, like a tonic. He slapped her, hard, across the mouth so that her head snapped back with the force of it, the sound echoing through the sanctuary like the crack of a single-tail whip. “Bitch. Shut the fuck up. This is your fault.”
She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and sucked at it like it was a piece of candy, sweet and succulent. “My fault?”
Sirius was entranced by the sight of Bellatrix rhythmically pulling on her cherry-red lips, stained crimson from lipstick and blood and sin. He leaned forward imperceptibly, wanting to frighten her. “What’d you do, Bellatrix, fuck him to make him join up?”
She smirked, and the twisting of her lips into a sneer seemed somehow unholy in the church. He moved closer, crowding her, until they were nose-to-nose. The air between them sparked with their magic and that ineffable something that made them Blacks-centuries of breeding and darker aspirations staining their skin and infusing the air with the hot, sticky thickness of unbridled hate.
“Jealous?” Bellatrix had a purr that would make a saint blush. It sounded like pure wickedness vibrating in the empty cavity that was her chest, unencumbered by a heart as he imagined she was.
“Of you?” He sniffed disdainfully. “Hardly.” They were so close he could smell her; the sweetly innocent scent of vanilla battling with the musky earthiness of myrrh, wafting like incense through the alcove. He could feel the heat of her body, burning through her still-damp clothes like the flame of the candles behind him. Those small candles represented the prayers of the penitent; hers was the flame that beckoned the sinner home to hell.
“No. That I had him, of course. And you didn’t.” She licked her lips and it was too much; he was overcome at last.
“Know that for a fact, do you?” The words tumbled from his lips in an unwanted confession; if there had been a priest there, he’d even now be on his knees, reciting the Lord’s Prayer in some desperate attempt for contrition for that admission.
Her laughter sounded like the devil himself had left hell to come dance in the hallowed shadows of the church. “Oh, cousin. How delightful.” She pressed herself against him, arms snaking up to wrap around his neck. “We’ve shared the same lover, have we?”
He was staring at her, the temptation of her with her apple-red mouth, without the desire to tell her to get thee behind him, as one was supposed to do with the devil. “Bitch,” he whispered again, but the word was without his usual heat. He captured her mouth with his, hating her that she was right, and wanting-for one absurd, ridiculous moment-to be close to her because Regulus had been.
“Hate you, hate you, hate you,” Sirius chanted those two words like a litany as he tore at her inappropriately red dress robes. They lay eventually in a puddle at her feet, like a pretty puddle of blood, like she was some martyr whose blood had been spilt for something greater than herself.
Nothing could be further from the truth, as the Mark burned into her skin testified.
“I can tell,” Bellatrix said, rubbing herself against him. Her hand reached down and grabbed his erection, rubbing her palm over it. “Going to give me holy communion, are you?”
He took her mouth again, mainly so she’d stop talking, but she bit with her sharp little teeth until he tasted his own blood.
“There, I gave it to you. In nomini patris et filii et spiritus sanctus,” she muttered, and he shoved her back against the wall, the copper smear of blood filling his mouth.
Her heady scent wrapped cloud-like around him while her moans in his ear sounded like a chant as he fucked her hard against the church wall, hidden in the shadows. Somewhere, the bells began to ring, and he thought the sound vibrated in his head and made him crazed.
“Didn’t want to do it,” she moaned, head forced back on the hard stone wall, hitting with such force he was surprised she didn’t faint from the contact.
He bit her, hard, smearing blood on her paleflower flesh. Her long legs were wrapped tight around his waist, and she was surprisingly passive as he fucked her with all the pent-up rage screaming in his soul.
“What’d you pray for?” He pulled back enough to watch her face as he shoved himself inside her; he didn’t caress her other than that one bite; didn’t stroke her full breasts, pressed so enticingly against his heaving chest.
He gave her nothing but the sure, angry stroke of his cock, the furious glare of his face as he scowled down into her upturned one. Her eyes were clenched shut, as if she were blocking his face from her memory.
She arched herself into him, claw-like talons digging into his shoulders. “You want to know, cousin?” she panted, and instead of horrifying him, the reminder of their kinship pushed him further to the very edges of his sanity.
One of his arms braced at her throat, and he pressed it slowly against her, stealing her breath. He could feel the pulse of her blood fluttering under his fingers, becoming irregular and spastic under the subtle pressure he exerted upon her delicate throat. He felt as dizzy and lightheaded as she must have as he continued, and he saw truth for the first time in her eyes - that he could kill her, and that she wanted him to, and that she would not fight him if he chose to try. She’d die by his hands, there in the alcove, and maybe that was what she had prayed for all along.
It was almost as tempting to do it as it had been to give in and fuck her, and as the blood struggled to rush up to his head, thwarted by gravity, he felt himself falling into dizziness even as her muscles relaxed beneath him. So easy to kill her…the power he had over her in that moment was more intoxicating than wine, headier than lust.
At the moment when she would have slid into the enfolding darkness of unconsciousness, he stopped abruptly, so that the air rushed back into her lungs and she gulped, eyes wild, staring at him with a mixture of relief and hatred on her face, which was pinkened with renewed blood where before it had been deathly pale. Her gaze glimmered with unshed tears, dark crystals in her fathomless eyes.
“I asked for forgiveness,” she choked, and he was near to throwing her away from him in disgust and forgetting all of this. He was disgusted with himself, with her, and his brother was being buried and what was he doing, fucking his cousin in the church.
“You sicken me,” he snarled, and went to toss her aside, throw her down to join her red silk robes at their feet.
“Oh, no, Sirius,” she snapped, and her legs tightened around his waist as she rubbed herself against him tantalizingly. Her body was warm and soft and wet, and he hated himself, but he started thrusting again, mindlessly seeking release. “You’ll finish this.”
He ignored her, pushing towards completion, ignoring the bite of her nails and her whimpering moans, and his brother’s name as it tumbled shamefully from her lips, a mortal sin to speak it so, and he didn’t care, was fucking her against the wall until his mind slipped away, until he found absolution, until he no longer cared…
So close…his cock dragged in and out of her, painfully, rhythmically. If she just kept her mouth shut, he’d forget who she was, and there’d be a moment’s forgetfulness before a lifetime of horrified remembrance at what he’d done…
Bless me, father, for I have sinned…
“Don’t you…want to know why…?”
Her voice was roughened and dark, like she shattered the glass beside them and eaten heaping handfuls of it. It sounded torn and ripped from whatever was left of her soul. He didn’t like the way it caressed him, the way it made him push his hips forward and drive himself harder into her clinging, tempting little body.
The mistake was easy to make. He did not remember who she was, in his quest to think of her only as a willing receptacle for lust, a way to feel life as he was surrounded by death and sorrow. He should have been thinking, should have known better than to give in, to give her what she wanted…
“No, don’t care…”
She was climbing him like ivy on the church façade, and her mouth was very close to his ear.
“I did it, Sirius. I killed him.”
The words fell around him with dreadful finality, like the mournful ring of the church bells, or the handful of dirt that was surely hitting his brother’s coffin in the churchyard as they buried him.
At the same instant he stilled, horrified, she tightened her inner muscles around his cock and clenched him tight, surrounding him with all that wanton evil and delicious sin that made up her very being. He could not have stopped it, though he cried out in pure anguish as he came within her, as he felt her orgasm match his own.
He shoved her away when it was over. She fell atop her silk robes, black hair askew and his come smeared on her thighs, blood and shadows of bruises staining the delicate hollows of her collarbones. He did up his trousers and spoke a cleansing charm in a harsh voice, leaving her there bathed by the muted colors of the stained glass window as the weak afternoon sun shone through at last, breaking through the clouds as if giving his brother one final, sunbright kiss goodbye.
They were gone, the lot of them, when he finally found his brother’s grave. He fell next to the damp mound of dirt, crying the tears he’d been unable to shed at last, as he remembered her final words, whispered in a satisfied voice as he left her there.
Ego te absolvo.