Bliss

Bliss

Lucius was in a terrible mood when he came home from his excursion to France. Things had not gone well, and he was nervous, on edge, his whole body buzzing with tension. As such, he was in no mood for it when Narcissa threw herself at him as soon as he opened the door, and snapped at her.

She stopped instantly, stepping back. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he snapped, throwing his coat on the floor. A house elf crept out to hang it up, but he threw a nearby knick knack at the little beast and it fled, whimpering.

Narcissa frowned and picked up the knick knack, dusting it off with her fingers and glaring at him with accusing eyes. "Don't throw things."

"It's my house, I'll throw anything I want," he said, vaguely aware that he sounded like a twelve year old but too unnerved to care.

Narcissa pouted at him. She had been so excited to see him - he had been away for nearly a week and a half - and now he got home and threw things at the elves and yelled at her. She felt tears gather in her eyes and turned away, not wanting him to see her cry.

He saw anyway and was instantly sorry. He should have stopped and had a drink on the way home, he thought, so he could have calmed down and not been nasty to Narcissa. He felt that apologies were in order but did not want to say sorry.

He compensated by asking her about the past week, trying to act calm, normal, to slow his still-pounding heart. Narcissa forgave him in an instant, her relieved smile told him, and immediately launched into the stories he knew she had carefully planned ahead of time. Narcissa was always good about keeping him entertained with sweet smiles and funny stories, even if, truth be told, the stories she told him weren't entirely true. Especially now, Lucius did not care.

She fixed him a martini. She giggled and smiled and flirted and regaled him with anecdotes about the trials and tribulations of her day to day life, and he listened, trying not to hear his own thoughts. He realized vaguely that he was treating her like a sitcom, but didn't particularly care. He saw that he was sweating slightly, fists clenched, and made a deliberate effort to sit back and calm down.

"So I'm in the chair, and the dentist is going on, and he tells me I should be brushing harder, that my gums should be pinker and basically that all my teeth are going to fall out by the time I turn twenty five. I'm afraid if I mention that about the only flossing I do is with the Toothflossing Stringmints from Honeydukes, he'll want my down payment for dentures on the spot, so I don't say anything . . ."

Lucius began to relax. He may have just committed murder for the first time, but Narcissa didn't know that and she loved him. He knew that now, listening to her go on about her day, and was suddenly bouyed by this rambling proof of her love. He had always known that she was in love with him, but he felt it now, deeply. He was moved to stand up and silence her with a tender kiss.

She submitted to it for a moment, but then pushed him away. She studied his face carefully. Lucius looked away.

"What happened?" she asked, very quietly. Lucius stepped away from her and began to pace.

"Nothing."

She began to pout again. "Why won't you ever talk to me?"

He glared at her, exasperated. "Are you going to start that shit again? For Christ's sake, Narcissa, I just got home! Give me some peace and quiet, will you?"

"I wasn't starting anything! I just want to know why you never tell me anything!"

"There's nothing to tell!"

She started to cry. He hated it when she cried. It made her so much harder to talk to - she always expected sympathy and he had none to give, and it made her hate him.

"Yes, there is," she sobbed, "and you won't tell me. You never talk to me. I always talk to you, I tell you everything, but everything I find out about you I have to hear from Bella!"

"Bella, Bella, Bella. Does she have to enter every conversation we have?" In truth, Narcissa's oldest sister was not a regular feature in their conversations, but Lucius hated Bellatrix right now and never wanted to talk about her again. How dare she tell Narcissa things about him? Narcissa would know what he saw fit for her to know. Bellatrix had no right to decide otherwise. He had never liked Bellatrix, and she had never liked him, and he hated the thought of Narcissa going round to her and scrounging all the details of his other life. He fancied that they had long, in-depth conversations, about how Lucius had to kneel down and kiss his master's robes and how he had drunkenly come on to Bellatrix two weeks ago when he had stayed at the Lestrange's for the night.

"If you would talk to me, she wouldn't!" Narcissa cried. She was blinked rapidly against further tears, but it was a losing battle. Lucius despised her for crying over him.

"There's nothing to talk to you about." Lucius wasn't sure what else to say, and his spate of anger dissapted as suddenly as it had come. He drunk the last of his martini and set it down, feeling strange.

Narcissa didn't seem to know what else to say, either, so she stood, crying silently. Lucius did not go to her, as he knew she wished he would.

"I just wish you would tell me things," she sobbed finally, and Lucius was inexplicably angered.

"I'll tell you what I want you to know," he said heatedly, "and if I find out you've been going to your sister again behind my back about me, I'll-"

"You'll what?" she demanded. Narcissa would not be threatened. In his anger he had forgotten that, and regretted it now. Narcissa would stand for just about anything but threats. "I won't be talked to like this! I can talk to my sister whenever I like, about whatever I like, be it you or anything else!" Then something occurred to her. "What you *want* me to know? What are you keeping from me, Lucius?" She was suspicious now, and angry.

Her suspicion made Lucius suspicious. "What do you know?"

"What do I . . .? What do you mean?" She narrowed her eyes.

"What do you know, what does she tell you?" He was irritated, and a little worried. What had Bellatrix told her? How much did she know? Obviously not that much, or she would have long since left, but . . .

Narcissa glared at him. "I don't know. Stuff."

He clenched his fist in frustration. "Tell me. Now."

A little frightened, but still with an air of superiority, Narcissa said, "She told me where you were the past week."

He would rip that nasty little bitch apart with his two hands. "Did she."

Narcissa lifted her chin defiantly. "Did you have fun?" she asked coldly.

"Oh yes. Bunches."

"You *lied* to me."

He nearly laughed. "I'd have to say that's the least of my problems at the moment, my dear."

Narcissa asked, still coldly, "I'm always the least of your problems, aren't I?"

He was not in the mood for her petulance. "Well, I can always get another wife."

She gasped, and he heard her sob quietly and leave the room. He sank down into a chair, exhausted, his brain crawling. He felt terrible. He had just murdered three men scarcely four hours ago and now he had practically gotten divorce papers for his wife to sign. He sighed deeply, drew his knees up towards his chest, and fell asleep in the armchair.

A half hour or so later, Narcissa crept in. She saw him sleeping and shook out the flimsy silk blanket that was thrown over the couch and laid it over him, so softly he didn't even stir.

Lucius woke up and was pleased to see that his sleep had been untroubled. He had expected to have to relive the previous day endless times in his dreams, but he been spared that misery. He had, however, tossed about quite a bit during his sleep, and the blanket Narcissa had put over him had fallen to the floor unnoticed.

He stood up and stretched. He was stiff and sore, still dressed in now-wrinkled clothes from yesterday, but he felt good. The night's sleep had cleansed him, and he felt fresh and almost pleasant.

He showered, shaved, dressed in clean clothes and went down to breakfast. Narcissa was already down, sitting at the table and nibbling at toast. She looked very pretty in an off-white peasant top and brown satin drawstring capris, with her blonde hair loose around her shoulders. She did not greet him.

He fixed himself a cup of tea and sat down at the table, selecting a crumpet from the plate laid out and slicing and buttering it. After a moment of silence, Narcissa said, "I'm going to stay with Bellatrix for a few days."

Lucius did not bother to disguise his disappointment, or his annoyance. "I just *got* here."

"I'll be back on Sunday."

"I might not be here." He would be here. It was a shot in the dark to get her to stay.

Narcissa was glacial. "Maybe you should find a wife with a more flexible schedule, then."

"Oh, you aren't going to do *that*, are you?" Lucius felt suddenly exhausted, faced with the insurmountable challenge of a wronged wife.

She glared at him.

"Look, I'm sorry, I was tired . . ."

"I was tired, too, but I didn't tell you how replaceable you were!" Her voice shook and he knew she was close to tears. He also knew that she had been up most of the night going over last night's argument endlessly with one or another of her sisters. Bellatrix would have told her to leave him and Andromeda would have told her to kill him in his sleep. If it had been the two of them in tandem, they would have told her to take a hot bath and talk to him in the morning, probably with lots of female empowerment nonsense thrown into the mix. They were much less lethal when they acted as the wise older sisters instead of Narcissa's protectorates and guardians of her honor.

Narcissa's sisters frightened him. Before he and Narcissa had gotten engaged, he had gotten on well enough with both of them, especially Andromeda - pretty, vivacious, charming Andromeda - but afterwards there would always be a powerful hostility emanating from the two of them whenever he was with them. He had not really minded all that much - he and Bellatrix had never been close, and he had tried to distance himself as much as he could from Andromeda after she had married that mudblood nobody Ted Tonks. So had Narcissa, at first, but a few months after the wedding he had come home to find the two of them giggling in the living room over magazines and old photo albums. Lucius had since forbidden her to see Andromeda, but they both knew she did anyway, and he didn't kick up a fuss about it.

After a long pause, Lucius spoke up again as Narcissa was clearing her dishes. "When are you leaving?"

Narcissa was indifferent to his soft tone, which usually worked well on her. "At noon."

Bellatrix would send her a Portkey by owl, he knew. Narcissa hated using Floo powder. He broke down a little. He didn't want her to go. "Why don't you stay here?"

"Because I don't want to see you," she said coldly, making her way to the kitchen. He followed her.

"Do you know what happened the past week?" He asked. She put her dishes in the sink and looked at him, sulkily.

"I know what was supposed to happen," she said grudgingly. Good. She didn't know. Then, still more reluctantly, she asked, "Why? What happened?"

He hesitated. After the fight last night, he knew the last thing he should respond with was 'nothing,' but wasn't sure what else to say. "It . . . well . .. things, em, things didn't go - just some unplanned - "

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What happened?"

He stared at her. "I . . ." He didn't know what to say. She wouldn't understand.

Narcissa slammed her fist down on the counter. "Tell me!" she cried, angry and frustrated. He looked away.

"It didn't go - very smoothly. There were some - some complications." He took a deep breath. She said nothing. "We were just supposed to raid the house, and look, you know, for - for the plans, but - I - I messed up. It was - " He swallowed, and glanced up at Narcissa quickly, nervously. He was pleased to see she looked concerned.

"What? What is it?" She asked, her eyes wide.

"It was an accident. I hadn't meant to - it was me and Rookwood, and we - I - I miscalculated, I messed up the timetable - they were at home, and we didn't see them at first, we were in plainclothes, and they overheard too much, so we had to - we couldn't let them find out - "

"Oh, no," she said softly.

"We used the Curse," he said, still more quietly. "But one of them, the oldest man - but he wasn't old, not really, he was about twenty nine or so - he didn't go down so easy and I had to break his neck. That didn't - " he gave a sudden, nervous laugh. "It didn't work very well. I - it was - it was just a - God, what a mess - It'll be all over the French papers, and here too - the Dark Lord wasn't too pleased -"

Narcissa had turned away from him and was busying herself straightening dishes. He could tell from her posture that she was horrified. He reached out to touch her, to comfort her, or himself, he wasn't sure, but she pulled away.

"Was that the first time?" she asked, her voice slightly high pitched.

He was relieved he didn't have to lie. "Yes. The first."

She calmed down a bit, but she was still blinking back tears. He didn't want her to be calm, not when she had gotten him nervous and agitated again.

"I had to beat the man to death," he said, staring at her. She made a strangled noise and her grip on the plate she was holding tightened.

"Don't tell me that," she whispered, staring at the plate.

He barely stopped himself from smiling. "You wanted me to tell you."

She looked up at him, frightened and sad. She saw him for what he was for the first time - a controlling, borderline abusive neurotic, and now a murderer. The shiny newness of her marriage had worn off completely now, and she was standing in this kitchen with a man who used to bring her white lilies and was now telling her he beat a man to death. She was nineteen years old. "I don't want to know," she said, numbly.

He had known this all along.