Air and Water

Air and Water

She sits. Stealth. Silence. Secrets. A soft breeze whispers by her white cheek as she stares into nothing, the extravagant rolling garden blooms of the Manor estate lost to her numbed gaze.

She swallows hard, proud, defiant. But the walls are crumbling, as despair hacks it's way through. Hope drowned a long lost age ago.

One teardrop splashes on her lap.

Breathing makes her ache.

Emptiness suffocates her.

But where do you run to when the whole sky is falling?

* * * * *

That night, up in the East-wing study, Lucius leaned slowly back in his chair and lit up a cigar, his clear-grey eyes tracing the smoke as it wove its way spectrally upwards to the slightly open window.

The sky outside was shadowed deep-graphite and red, the colour of hatred, and the air smelled faintly of dying blossoms and a hundred hidden torments.

Papers lay unread and unsigned on the desk, and the candle waned low in front of him, the glow it gave so small and failing in the midst of the impending darkness.

He sighed.

'Where do you go, alone these nights?' His curiosity broke the surface and became an unheard whisper in the dark as he watched the wraith-like figure of his wife emerge from the black gardens below and move through the side-door.

'Why do you never come to me anymore?'

Through the thick, leaded glass, his eyes followed her.

She moved slowly, extinguishing the tall candles one by one down the long hallway, moving quickly out of each freshly cast shadow, as if she was somehow afraid...

Lucius tilted his head, and watched in tired wonder.

'When was it that I lost you?'

He glimpsed his own eyes in a shaded mirror, caught by the moonlight, and felt a surge of fury at his own inability to do, or to say, or to even reach out, and he felt wrenches of shame, at the pathetic questions he could only ask the darkness.

The last light went out, and Narcissa disappeared from sight.

* * * * *

Narcissa picked up the quill she had hurled to the floor in frustration hours earlier and took her place at the table in their shared bedchamber. She smoothed the parchment and began once again.

Lucius...

She wrote his name carefully, as if it were some precious prayer. But then the page turned into that familiar vortex, where her pathetic inadequate words would be lost and drowned and hurled aside into the soundless airless abyss, meaning and signifying nothing at all.

How could she force his head up against the window to their shared memories, and make him live them again? How could she keep trying to breathe life into this thing that was dying so fast in front of them both?

Quiet nights of twilight and stars, where his heads felt heavy on her shoulder, but she would never wake him because he was beautiful when he slept, and she would try to hold his hand so she could be with him in his dream...

She dipped the quill into the raven ink.

When he kissed the back of her neck in the middle of the night and her body was ready for him again even though she still ached from him an hour ago and she would turn to him and hold onto him for dear life and fuck him like she had to when she was so obsessed by this fallen angel who had landed right at her feet...

She began to write, slow, elegant, delicate strokes.

This beautiful, terrifying, dark life they had held together, holding their Malfoy name high, and protecting it, and repairing it, and when she kneeled in front of him when he bled from an Auror attack and she cleaned away his blood and washed away his pain and knowing he believed her when she told him 'We-will-win...'

She lay down the feather and held her note up to the candle, watching transfixed while the white flame curled black the edges and finally burned into the only two words she had written; 'Lucius...Goodbye.'

* * * * *

He knew something was wrong when he reached the bedchamber late at night and was greeted only by the pale curtains blowing ragged on the bitter cold air coming in through the open window. Narcissa was nowhere, and it seemed she had drank a glass of his whisky and smoked one of his cigars, neither things had she ever done in all their time together.

Panic rose fast in his throat, and he turned to run but stopped, his attention caught by smouldering candle and the ash and burned parchment that littered the surface of the polished wood.

He grabbed at it, sinking lower, despising himself more with each tiny letter of his wife's lost message that he managed to piece together.

The lonely chimes of a clock echo in his head, he collapses in terror, his hands shaking, his breath stopping as he feels the weight of the Malfoy privilege crushing his heart because it's all going to fail now, it's all going to fall apart, because I'm too late and none-of-this- works-without-her...

*

Narcissa shivers hard, the alcohol hasn't helped, she slides into the dark waters, her expensive dress floating around her white willowy body like so many of the already-dead petals adorning the surface.

She stares up at the moon and feels glad the stars are out for her tonight, and she sighs shakily and cries silently, then her pretty little head goes under the water, but she keeps her eyes on the moon above as she sinks to the bottom and she counts the bubbles as they leave her chest and distantly laughs at herself for all her stupid, beautiful eccentricities that stayed with her to the end and she wonders if she'll miss numbers and she hurts because she'll never see her Lucius again...

And she wonders how it has all come to this, but the end is there, in sight, so its just easier to keep going forward because it's almost impossible to turn back...

They say it flashes before your eyes, but it's longer than a flash, it's a whole other lifetime, all of your own, all for you...

Pale orchids on the table.

Sunlight through our bedroom window as I lie with you on cold mornings

The day we said 'I do'.

When we sat under apple-blossoms and made promises until the snow came.

The days I made you laugh.

The days you made me cry.

And there's my father and my mother, how adored I was, how strange to think, and there's my beautiful sister, and the other one, the one we don't talk about, and there's you, Lucius Malfoy, how happy you made me for so long, but I suppose it's my vanity that has brought me here, when I could not be all you see any more...

And there...at the end of this long, light corridor...someone else...somebody new...a pale-blond child...turns slowly to me and looks up at me and says...'Mother?'

* * * * *

Lucius crashes through the door, slamming the button with his palm as he passes, and splashes into the pool, the underwater lights flickering on, brightening the black water so he can see the pale shape at the bottom, at the other end.

He dives down and gathers her up, how tiny she seems now, he brings her to the surface.

'How can I be too late?' he murmurs feveredly, his face in her wet, white hair as he holds her tight to his chest. 'I'm here now, Narcissa, look! I'm here now!'

She splutters and rises violently and vomits water and desperately gasps the cold air. Her eyes are open, her look is changed, she stares at Lucius, dripping wet and desperate and holding on to her for life.

'Narcissa, are you here? Are you here?!'

She gives a tiny breathless smile and touches his face and wonders into the distance how long she will harbour the secret of their baby she knows is there.

* * * * *

END

Thank you to all reviewers for your kind comments in the past, they never, ever went unnoticed.

Air and Water is dedicated to C.