Descent

DESCENT

Chapter Three

Regulus sat on the four-poster bed, feeling the foundations of his world crumbling around him. Everywhere he looked was black with horror, even inside his mind pulsed with the suffocating evil of what he had become. There were no options any more. There were only varying degrees of agony as he slowly drowned in a filthy sucking swamp of sin and terror.

Narcissa paused a moment before she entered the room. It was time to act. To decide. She approached quietly and stopped in front of him, questions flickering in her eyes.

'Regulus. You don't look well. . . .'

'I'm not well. I'm so, so sick.'

She blinked at him.

'What is it?' she asked tentatively, her heart quickening.

He gazed up at her, she saw the tears waiting behind his eyes.

'It's over, Narcissa. . . .'

'Over?'

'I——I've got myself in a mess——somewhere along the line——I've gotten lost. . . .'

'Do you mean-

'The Death Eaters——I can't. . . .' his voice wavered dangerously as he battled the emotion wrenching in his throat. 'Not any more.'

Narcissa stared down at him. He shook his dark head, his bright blue eyes wide, appealing to her like a terrified child. 'If I have to go again. . . .' His voice broke and a teardrop escaped, which he smeared away with a shaking hand. 'Don't make me go again. . . .'

The illicit knowledge that had been growing in her like a poisoned embryo had finally broken the surface. But as he sat before her, here, now, in the daylight, and said the words out loud, Regulus was not the only one who felt fear.

He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes, taking a shaky breath.

'They were so happy, when I told them, Narcissa——you should have seen the pride in my father's face, the joy in my mother's eyes——and you. I know you know the importance of purity. But I can't do it. I can't keep paying for my beliefs with all this blood. Please don't make me go again. . . .'

'Regulus, how long...?'

'An eternity. It started not long after He scarred me with this.' He pulled his shirt sleeve up and brandished the twisted shape of the Dark Mark at her. 'It's supposed to call you, drive you, enflame you. But all it does is burn.' Another tear dropped onto his knee.

Narcissa sat down next to him on the bed. She was trembling, as excitement she had thought she would never feel again awakened from a deep sleep inside her.

'I can try and make my mind forget what they made me do. But my soul will always be stained by it. . . . And I kept going there for you. . . . And now——you're going to leave me,' he quaked, his voice now nothing but a pained whimper.

Regulus slumped forward, his head in his hands.

Narcissa thought fast. She gazed out of the leaded window into the cold English sky. The sprawling future sits in my small, pale, manicured hand, like the tiniest hummingbird in the claws of a dragon.

Kill. Or cure.

Narcissa took Regulus's thin, quivering hand in hers,

'Regulus,' she whispered, shaking her head slowly, stroking strands of hair from his face that were stuck there with tears.

'You. . . .?' he stammered, almost inaudibly.

'It's alright.' She moved close to him and kissed his handsome face, as pale and aristocratically beautiful as her own. She tasted the saltwater despair on his cheek, and then held him close in an embrace, feeling him holding on to her tightly.

'I love you, Narcissa.'

Over his shoulder, her eyes were glazed and staring, as the corner of her mouth twitched with the suggestion of a smile. Inside her head was filled with ecstatic visions of a future she had thought lost. And she reached for it.

*

As the next morning breezed in through the elaborate curtain drapes of the study, Regulus looked into the sunlight and felt it warm on his skin. He had not noticed the seasons changing around him over the last year or so, but now he smelled the new life in the garden as it carried in on the honeysuckle breeze, and he breathed deep with happiness. Undoubtedly there were troubled times ahead, and his heart was tired of hurting all the time. But as he sat here, in the midst of a beautiful day, with the taste of Narcissa's kiss still in his mouth, he felt that everything would be alright. He picked up his quill and began to write.

Sirius,

I know how you've felt about the choices I've made in my life. Most of them dark and wrong and black. But please believe me when I tell you that I've seen the future and it's a different colour.

I've made the decision to end my involvement with the Death Eaters. The things I have seen, the things I have been asked to do. I have been sick and afraid every waking hour for so long now, I barely remember what I used to be.

I don't know what my backing out will spell for me, so I have decided to leave the country, at least for a while, until the whole thing calms down.

Also, I realise you don't approve of me being with Narcissa. But, as much as it surprised me at first, she's happy about my decision and is going to come with me. Sirius, if you just knew her like I do, you'd understand. And I wouldn't be with her if I didn't trust her with my life.

I'm going to owl mum and dad with the news. I know they're going to be disappointed, but I've made my decision and believe it to be the right one.

Keep well, Sirius, I hope to return to better times.

Regulus

*

Lucius barged his way through the Saturday night rabble towards the bar tender. He despised Sofiya almost as much as he had despised Muggle-infested London, with it's swarming filth and absent standards. He felt a pang of something he had not felt in a while; a quiet, but overwhelming desire to be back in Wiltshire, immersed in the serene, spacious affluence of middle-England.

But the memory of his late parent's manor conjured further nostalgia, things he was not going to allow himself to explore here.

Anger erupted within him as he was jostled by some unseen body, and loud, coarse Bulgarian voices rang out around his head.

When he finally reached the bar, he shot a disgusted look at the ragged hordes behind him, and muttered something under his breath.

No sooner had he turned back to the bar, when he felt a rough hand on his shoulder which spun him around.

'Get your filthy-'

But the next he knew he was on the floor, a mass of bodies blurring before his eyes. Stunned, he struggled to find what had happened, but that soon became clear with the rush of pain in his head and the blood dripping onto the floor in front of him.

It seemed some obscenities transcended the language barrier.

Grabbing the nearest table, Malfoy began to pull himself up, but then someone kicked him hard in the ribs, and he collapsed back onto the floor, rolling onto his back gasping to breathe.

Through the blood smeared in his eyes, he saw a dark figure reach for him, and he was jerked roughly up by his collars.

'Get off me!' he choked, before he was hit hard in the face, and then nothingness.

Doormen waded in and parted the crowd, stepping over Lucius's unconscious body slumped on the filthy floor while his pure Malfoy blood pooled amongst the dirt and grime of the worn floorboards.

The men dispersed the trouble and calmed the customers, and eventually two of them crouched to Malfoy and dragged him outside. But as they tried to revive him, they did not notice the snake in the mouth of the skull searing black on his left forearm, sending out a summons that would not be answered.

*

Lucius awoke with a jolt, and lay still for a moment, trying to decipher the unfamiliar ceiling. Then spikes of pain in his head and waves of raw tenderness wrenched him agonisingly into the present.

Different memories all clamoured at once for his attention; stuck in a packed bar in the city, struggling against teeming filth, getting hit by some common criminal. . . .

Wanting to go home.

He stood, unsteady on his feet, and approached the barred cell door. He tried to see down the dank corridor, but there was no one around, not even a guard. Another example of the judicial failings of this godforsaken country.

He slumped back down onto the mouldering bunk, as he felt a twinge of fading pain in his forearm. Dark waters of dread began to gather and swirl in the depths of his heart. If he had missed another calling for the Death Eaters. . . . This could barely look worse.

His white-blond head dropped forward into his hands. Nothing like waking up to a brand new low.

Lucius sighed and lay his aching body back on the iron-framed bed, pulling the thick, scratchy wool blanket over him. He was exhausted. Despair coursed through him as he gazed up through the tiny barred arch-window above, trying to focus on the waning starlight outside.

His last night in Britain had looked like this. The last night he had spent next to Narcissa.

Are you seeing these stars right now? Or don't you even look anymore?

There had not been much talking, or much of anything, except gazing until they had both fallen asleep, together for the last time. Her tears had felt damp on his white shirt, and the transparent patch they made had remained until daybreak, when he had awoken alone.

Do you cry anymore?

He closed his eyes.

No. Never. Not for me. If you could see me now, you'd wish you'd never wasted your tears.

Aching, bruised and drowning in self-hatred, Lucius reached out to the forbidden box of memories, the only thing left in his mind that was not pulsing with hate.

His arm slid under the blanket, and he spent another dark night alone in a dark place imagining his hand was her. . . .

Shadows dance on their pale skin as they move in the candlelight, a tangle of crumpled school uniform, white-blond hair and damp desire.

Narcissa's forearm tenses as she grips hard onto the back of the chair, taking him deeper inside her as she sits astride him, her other hand resting on his chest where his white shirt is open. His hand under her t-shirt grasps at her breasts, resistance coming as skin moves over pale skin, sticky with sweat, the palm of his other hand on her small naked bottom under her short school skirt.

Strands of pale hair stick to her angular pureblood face, she moves on him, an almost invisible strand of saliva stretches and breaks between them as they part from a deep kiss.

He shifts slightly taking her harder, and she murmurs before her mouth meets his again, addicted to the way he tastes, of vodka, Durmstrang and power. . . .

Lucius let out one quiet gasp in the darkness, and it was over. He looked at the warm damp on the grimy sheet and felt sickened with himself.

He moved away from the bed, as far as he could get in the tiny cell, and stood against the partition. As he slowly slid his back down the wall, memories of his personal descent since arriving here jeered at him from the gateway that held his nightmares. He hit the floor and could sink no lower.

He lay, empty on the cold, filthy floor, his exhausted gaze fixed on an anonymous constellation he could see through the barred window. He gave in, and felt himself slipping away, into dreams he no longer had the strength to fight.

*

Narcissa gazed into the dark air, the twinkle of a group of stars reflected in her palest-blue eyes. Nerves flickered in her stomach. But strength encircled her in the form of a misty recollection, a whisper in her mind, a reassuring drawl. . . .

'You decide who you are.'

She took a calming breath and strode into the dead building, where she waited in a shadowy hallway. She did not wait long.

The double doors in front of her opened slowly, into a room full of gloom and green shadows.

She felt a small glimmer of panic, but caught it and forced it away, lifting her perfect chin and standing up tall.

She strode inside, and stopped at the end of a long polished table, with chairs enough for thirty. At the other end was a large, ornately carved throne-like seat, where a figure sat, his features obscured by blackness. A huge serpent lay on the floor behind him, gliding slowly over the coils of it's own glistening body.

The doors banged closed behind her and an echo faded into the dank air.

'Narcissa Black. Welcome.' A low voice, measured and steady.

Narcissa bowed her head.

'I'm much obliged, My Lord.'

'May I first offer my thanks to you, Narcissa. For your most enlightening correspondence. Your information has proven to be of very great interest to me, very great interest indeed. And it does certainly appear that we have something of a problem on our hands.'

'Yes my Lord. I felt it was imperative that you be informed immediately.'

The Dark Lord nodded in the shadows, as the snake twisted slowly around the chair leg.

'Absolutely right, Narcissa. But every problem has its solution. I have long being planning to recall a servant of mine to my side. Personal business affairs and certain tasks in my service have kept him for too long in the black mountains of Bulgaria. He has grown weary there. Igor Karkaroff has brought it to my attention that certain standards are starting to slip, what with certain instances of self-destructive behaviour, lack of attendance and the like. . . .'

Something in Narcissa faltered. But she maintained her steady gaze.

'Lucius Malfoy' she whispered, feeling a jolt of nervous energy as she heard herself uttering the name that had burned inside her head every day for all this time.

'That's right.' She heard a smile in his voice. 'I feel the time may have come to bring him home. I will despatch an envoy to him, and we'll take care of his little inheritance quandary. And then we'll just make sure we can still rely on his. . . loyalty.'

Narcissa gazed into the darkness.

'My Lord——is he——I mean, is everything——alright?'

She saw a flash of red in the darkness as the light caught his eyes.

'It will be. When my Death Eater proves to me that he is still worthy of serving our cause. Igor Karkaroff is placed to head the Bulgarian contingent. Antonin Dolohov will assist. Lucius Malfoy will return to me and he will execute the vermin infidel Regulus Black.'