Contact

"Don't stare!" the irritated jerk of her hand unmistakably warned, jolting Lupin out of his shock long enough to shift his disbelieving gaze away. If the earth stood still on its axis, or rain suddenly fell upward, it might be more believable than what he'd just seen, despite the evidence his own eyes provided. No one just broke through Petrificus Totalus. No one. Who was this woman?

And, of more immediate concern, how was she supposed to continue doing what she was doing without attracting any attention?

A furtive glance provided enough information to fill his belly with a queasy mixture of relief and disquiet--neither man seemed to have noticed anything out of place, but both of them were eyeing their smaller victim up and down with an intensity that spoke of... Lupin shut off his thoughts abruptly, noting with disgust that Lennox was slowly running a bloated tongue over his lips. An unreasoning desire to drive the man's teeth out the back of his throat made Lupin grit his own. At least Tonks was facing the other direction and didn't have to see the blatant display.

So, for the moment at least, they remained ignorant of her little discovery.

It doesn't say much for our current situation that I can feel grateful for such a pathetically small favour. What are the chances she'll be put in a position where she can use it to our advantage? he asked himself bitterly.

He looked back at her, to where the shining drop that caught his attention earlier had been followed by several others, trailing downward one by one to drip off her chin and onto the stained front of her dress. The sight of those tears, the woebegone state of the child's face she wore, they were beginning to affect him too much. He forced himself to keep in mind that she was no child. It wasn't a little girl about to be tortured to death. Not that witnessing the death of a grown woman made for better circumstances at all...

He wanted to know what her real face looked like. How else could he dissociate who she was from the child that she seemed to be? Every protective instinct he possessed had responded unconsciously to her high-pitched, helpless cries; had raged against Claremont's cool sadism and the overt lasciviousness of Lennox; and now he couldn't think straight, couldn't think past the gut need to protect her. Neither of them would be helped by this sudden and inexplicable tendency to turn into a knight errant.

No, he realised uneasily. A knight errant wouldn't be so bad, but the truth was a little more sinister than that.

Every protective instinct.

A few times, less than a handful in his whole life, the tainted piece of his psyche that comprised the wolf had roused, reacted to an outside influence even while his human consciousness held sway. Outside of the days immediately surrounding the full moon, it was buried too far away to be reached, thankfully, forced to sleep out its term of imprisonment. Something was happening now to make it mutter fitfully in its slumber. A low, whining growl echoed through the chambers of his mind, emerging far too close to the surface for comfort.

Mentally bracing himself, he pushed against that other presence, driving it down until the vague grumbling receded back into the dark depths of his unconsciousness. The effort left him shaking, his shirt stuck to his back with sweat, and now as he looked at her, his eyes held a glint of fear, not only for her, but toward her as well. Anyone who could do that to him was dangerous, ally or not. He would take care to avoid her in the future...if they lived long enough to have futures.

Thoughts like that were irrelevant now, though; they still had to find a way out, and there was little chance that would happen if he couldn't bring himself under better control.

Her eyes, he saw now, spoke less of pain than they had earlier, in spite of the fact that she'd paid a price to free her hand. The little finger was red and angry, curled unnaturally away from the others at the second joint. Clearly broken, yet she continued to manipulate all five digits as she painstakingly forced more of her arm out of its captivity.

Whatever faults she might have, there was no denying her courage or quick wits, and perhaps that would be enough to get them out of there. It would have to be. There was little to no chance that he could wandlessly sever his ropes, and although his hands were free from just above the wrist--he twisted them experimentally to get an idea as to just how much movement was possible--there wasn't a thing he could do with the rest of his body trussed up.

His heart, raised so high by the sight of her moving fingers, sank back down to its former position in the pit of his stomach. What could they possibly accomplish with nothing more formidable than three empty hands?

Perhaps given more time, she could perform further miracles. It was just so damn frustrating to have to sit there and wait for the Death Eaters to make a move.

The only noises in the room came from the quiet and competing rhythms of four sets of lungs. Lupin frowned and began to wonder what Claremont was playing at. The man had done almost nothing but soliloquize; the silence that now fell over the group was disquieting.

What is he waiting for?

From the corner of the room came an unexpected sigh and a muttered, "Hell with this. It's been nothing but bleeding staring matches and trading insults with that wanking half-breed! I'm off to get a drink."

An almost imperceptible smile flickered across Claremont's face as he tore his eyes away from Tonks' sweat-soaked hair and glanced back over his shoulder. "By all means. Why stay and watch something as boring as the slow mental breakdown of a powerful adversary when there's a full bottle of whiskey to be had?"

Lennox scowled at his partner's back. Just bright enough to catch the mockery in the other man's voice, he seemed to bridle at the implied insult, loath to lose face in front of their prisoners; when Claremont turned to face him and gestured toward the door, however, he proved either unwilling or unable to resist both the disarming smile and the lure of a stiff drink. He surged to his feet and strode out, Claremont following as far as the doorway to call out for Banks.

Lupin lost no time in taking advantage of the distraction. His fingernails scratched gently on the grubby mattress cover and saw Tonks' eyes brighten slightly in response. He mouthed, "Are you okay?"

Her free hand made a vague gesture, indicating neither yes or no. She then pointed to the ropes wrapped around him and made a cutting motion with two fingers.

He shook his head briefly. Claremont was speaking quietly to Banks, and so Lupin chanced leaning in toward her. Whispering close to her ear, so low that he could barely hear himself speak, he asked, "Can you get any more of yourself free?"

She indicated her uncertainty by sweeping her hand upward in a questioning gesture and dropping it down again.

Another glance at the door while he quickly considered what next to say. There was just no time to mince words. "He'll draw this out as long as he can. The torture will only get worse." She tightened her hand into a fist, but Lupin saw that it trembled visibly for all of its defiance. "If the chance arises, we'll have to jump on it. Stay strong, alright?"

She crossed her fingers, and the smile held within the blue depths of her eyes was like a single ray of sunshine piercing down through the bars of a prison cell window--it brought hope at a time when by all rights, hope should have long since faded.

How could she possibly be so untouched by what had been done to her, by what might still happen? Guilt welled up inside his chest. Strength. It was easy for him to talk of being strong, leading her to believe that she could withstand Claremont. Would she have enough? Would he, even with the torment that he experienced every full moon? After all, she didn't know what she was up against, she couldn't...but he did.

Gods. Enough had been left of Claremont's victims from the last war to make Lupin all too knowledgeable about the ways and means of their deaths.

He took a breath, hoping she didn't hear how it struggled to get past the knot tightening in his chest. "Try to keep eye contact with me. It will help if you can focus outside yourself when they--" He stopped, not wanting to finish the sentence. "Look, if we can't get out of here, they're going to hurt you, and I can't...I won't be able to stop them, but I promise, I won't let them--" He swallowed down a lump of something that felt too much like fear. There was no way these half-sentences could be helping her fight back her own. "I won't let you die here."

All that could be done now was to pray that she put more faith in his own words than he did himself.

There was a pause in the conversation at the door, and Lupin hurriedly sat back again. Claremont stepped back and quietly shut the door. There was an ominous sense of finality following the sound of the latch clicking shut, as if to warn that nothing now stood between them and the evil embodied in the lone man turning to regard them. The disquieting smile that had crossed Claremont's face upon Lennox's defection to the kitchen returned in full force, confirming Lupin's vague fears: their captor looked altogether too satisfied for Lupin to believe anything other than that the removal of the second Death Eater had been Claremont's ultimate goal, the principal reason behind the word games and odd silences.

Lupin was left to wonder if Lennox could even appreciate the irony of the situation, that his presence had actually acted as a buffer between Claremont and the prisoners. As long as he remained, waiting hopefully for some titillation as a dog waits for table scraps, the worst would never happen--Lupin could only presume that Claremont wasn't the sort to share either certain spells or the full enjoyment of his labours. Whatever he was so jealously guarding from his partner was a question that Lupin didn't want to contemplate. It was disturbing enough to know that Claremont had held himself in check, tolerating even his prisoners' defiant speeches, until Lennox's impatience had predictably come to the fore and the man had gone off to indulge in the more immediate gratification that stood on the kitchen table. It was as clear as the sky outside, though, that whatever restraint Claremont had been exercising had been cast aside.

**************

Tonks tried to make some sense out of her strange, all-too-brief exchange with Lupin. She knew he had tried to be reassuring, but it sure as hell didn't come out that way. She watched him sink back into the mattress and returned to working more of her arm out of the Petrificus bonds, taking her mind off the conversation, thankful that the magic stifled the mewls of pain she could feel trying to make themselves heard as the cracked bones in her finger ground together. She'd felt it snap just before her hand had perforated the fabric of the spell, but at least some measure of mobility had been gained, despite the injury; now she just needed to figure out the next best step.

The door shut, and footsteps, presumably Claremont's, fell softly on the rug. She had only a few seconds to register the look in Lupin's eyes as they focused behind her, widening with an emotion that read altogether too much like fear, and she wondered what in their enemy's expression would make him react in such a way.

A finger slipped under the back collar of her dress, against her spine. "Skin holds such possibilities, does it not?" The low murmur in her ear was somehow more of a violation than his hands on her body. "Like a blank canvas, just begging for an artist to work upon it." She felt the thin cotton material sliced away by a whispered Severing charm, felt as his breath struck her skin when the fabric was drawn to her sides and her back was laid bare.

Brave intentions turned tail and fled, leaving her to stand alone, unprotected, against whatever was about to happen. She tried to refocus on Lupin, understanding now why he'd told her to hold eye contact. His steady gaze told her all that she needed and wanted to hear, even though he couldn't speak the words aloud: she wouldn't go through this alone, he would stay with her, he wouldn't let them break her. Please God, let him be right, she cried inwardly.

The meeting of their gazes strengthened her will for a few precious moments, but her resistance was slowly leeched away by the touch of those hated fingers: Claremont had begun to trace patterns over her exposed flesh. Not his finger, she suddenly realized. His wand. He was drawing something on her back with the wand tip, its movement agonizingly slow and deliberate, every brush leaving behind a tingle of magic on her skin.

He had drawn a little away from her to focus on his handiwork, and so his breath no longer forced itself, hot and suggestive, over her ear and down her neck, but she could still hear it, audibly quickening in excitement as the spellwork progressed.

Anger surged up within her chest as she listened, but she wanted to curse her own emotion, would have, since it sapped away valuable energy, had it not been for the simple blessing that onrushing tide of wrath brought along: it washed away fear and buoyed up her courage.

When I get free from this, I swear I'll make sure you never hurt anyone again, she vowed, clenching her fist until the nails brought blood. I'll kill you with my bare hands if I have to.

In the fierce roil of emotion, she barely registered that Claremont had finished, almost didn't catch the words that he incanted upon the symbols he'd placed on her back.

"Viscus Perussi!"

Lupin jerked upright.

"NO!"

The protest sounded as if it had been ripped out of him, and he began to fight almost violently against the restraining ropes, glaring at Claremont with eyes full of wrath and horror and frustration.

His efforts left him panting and flushed, and Tonks felt confusion mingling in with the anger still seething inside her chest. The words of the spell meant nothing to her; she'd never come across even the mention of it in the course of her schooling and Auror training. Lupin's reaction made it abundantly clear, though, that she was facing something truly terrible.

So why did she feel nothing? Even the subtle prickling of the magic as it seeped into her skin had faded, leaving behind a feeling of disquiet, as if she was resting in the eye of the storm.

"Such melodrama from a reputedly calm man." Claremont was purring in satisfaction. "I confess myself disappointed, Lupin--I learned that spell from the Dark Lord himself, shared it with none but my victims, and here you know it already. " He reached down to run his fingers through her curls. "You must also know, then, that it will take many hours for the spell to kill her. There's no call to worry over that little detail--it won't, in fact, kill her at all. I've something much better planned long before it gets to that stage."

Lupin's response was lost to her. A strange tickling sensation was beginning to run over the path Claremont's wand had traced, and Tonks felt her body trying to shiver.

"...hours for the spell to kill her"?

The tickling strengthened to an irritating itch, and her free hand involuntarily twitched with the desire to reach back and scratch at it.

The two men had fallen silent, both watching her now. Lupin, with some apparent knowledge of the spell's workings, had painted on his face a dismaying picture of terrified compassion--she knew he could see that it had started to take effect. He was helpless to do anything about it, and they both knew it. Still, she couldn't stop the mental pleading that he do something, anything, to save her from what was coming.

The itch was unbearable, almost painful in its intensity, and then suddenly...it disappeared. For several glorious seconds Tonks let herself believe that the spell had gone wrong, that despite all the buildup it had merely fizzled out like a bad firework.

A microsecond of warning was all she was given before it flared back to life.

FIRE.

Terrible. Unforgiving. Devouring.

It burrowed down beneath the surface of her skin until she could feel herself choking on wordless screams. Thought, emotion, even her breath, were crushed beneath the onslaught of such burning torment. How could anyone live through this? How long until she wasn't begging Lupin to save her, but to kill her instead?

Lupin. He swam in her vision as her eyes clung desperately to his, even through the torrent of tears that flooded up and threatened to blot out his face from her sight altogether. For that reason alone she made an inhuman effort to control the pain, or at least her reaction to it. His eyes, at this moment the most beautiful things in this godforsaken place, those glorious grey-blue orbs that were her only link to sanity, to escape, to life--she couldn't lose hold of them, or she truly would be lost.

It came as one of the darkest moments of her life, then, when she felt Claremont's hands on her shoulders, turning her inexorably away from the refuge of Lupin's steadfast gaze to face instead the icy hell contained within her torturer's eyes. They gleamed with twisted amusement, showing all too well that he knew what he was depriving her of by turning her away from her partner. The tears she had been holding back were now given rein to flow freely; let that madman's face be blocked out. He couldn't stop her from crying. And flow they did. His touch has intensified the agony inflicted on her back, making her vision fill with floating spots of light.

She barely registered Lupin's gasp as her wounds were turned to his view, followed quickly by Claremont's voice as it practically sang out an incantation.

"Aspicio!"

An agonized grunt announced how hard Lupin fought against the spell, just as the Death Eater's soft, malicious laughter told how utterly he had failed. "I told you, cur, you will watch; I wouldn't want you to miss any of this. Why, we've barely begun--these are only her outer decorations, after all."

The swimming lights increased. Just as in the corridor outside the flat, faintness threatened to overwhelm her, and a large part of her desperately wanted to submit, to be free of the pain. The tiny corner of her mind that remained clearheaded resolutely repulsed the idea, however, forcing the rest of her conscious mind to admit that Claremont would simply revive her again; somehow she found the determination to deny him that little satisfaction.

He reached around to the back of her neck and grasped a handful of golden hair, dragging her head back, forcing her to incline slightly backward toward Lupin. Caught in the grip of the Petrificus, her stiffened muscles protested the movement.

Through the blurry film that obscured her eyesight, she made out the shape of a wand descending toward her and felt once more the tracing of symbols, starting at her chin and descending downward over her neck and collarbones to the edge of her sundress. He paused, and it took a moment for her pain-befuddled thoughts to realize why. The hand holding the wand lay on her waist, while the other reached for the top of her dress.

In a dizzying flash of clarity, she saw both his intention and their means of escape, and without hesitation leapt to take advantage. It took one age-long moment to lengthen her hand and then she was striking upward, feeling the crackle of bone as she snatched at the wand so negligently dangled in front of her. Her fingers gripped the end of it, and while Claremont gaped at the unexpected movement, she was able to pull it almost entirely from his slackened grasp. His fingers scrabbled forward in desperation to catch the very tip of the handle, but she tightened her hold, and abruptly it slipped away from him. The sudden lack of resistance made her hard-won prize flip out of her own hand to go spinning wildly over her shoulder toward Lupin.

Claremont's eyes flashed, his furious gaze deadly, but he made the mistake of hesitating. In that split second of indecision on his part, while she knew he was asking himself whether he should go after Lupin's wand or fumble for one of the others stuck in his belt, her hand struck out once more. She clamped onto his wrist with adrenaline-fueled strength, giving Lupin a few more invaluable seconds with which to purchase a miracle. She focused all her attention on keeping hold of the hand that had so recently tormented her, knowing she would pay for the interference, knowing that it was a price worth paying.

He struggled against her grip, cursing her while his other hand yanked her head back painfully, nearly snapping her neck, but she clung to him like Devil's Snare. Abruptly she felt him using her own attack against her, pushing forward with the hand she clutched, forcing her down. Her body shrieked its silent anguish as the tortured skin on her back was ground into the mattress, swamping her senses with so much pain that she never felt his other hand release its hold on her hair, never saw as it clenched itself into a fist, utterly failed to see it descend toward her. The blow crashed into her cheek and nose with the force of a hammer.

The darkness that had courted her so assiduously for the last hour now refused to be kept away any longer, enclosing her in its shadowy embrace swiftly and without mercy. Her last fleeting thought was one of regret: she hadn't been able to say goodbye to Lupin.