Literatti: Fiction By Deslea

Living Doll
Deslea R. Judd
Copyright 2014


Pairing: Bellatrix Lestrange/Voldemort
Rating: NC17
Word Count: 2000
Summary: Voldemort likes to be alone with Bella - completely alone. Bella has her own reasons to oblige. Trigger warning for references to father-daughter rape.
More Fic: On AO3 or my fic site.
Feedback: Love the stuff. On AO3 or at deslea at deslea dot com.



"Vivo pupa."

As the words leave her Lord's lips, she feels a curious sensation pass over her flesh. A cool wind passing through her clothes, settling over her skin. Tingling as it penetrates. She feels her colour change, blood chilling and stilling inside her.

Her mind stills, too. Not as much as he thinks - she never entirely loses herself, for all that he wills it. But mostly. Nerves and synapses are slow to fire and the low thrum of ambition and need and fire falls silent.

As the weight of slow, thick blood drags her down, her arms fall beside her body. She will move now only as he seeks it, his will moving her blood and her flesh. Living porcelain over molten lead, cold but able to be warmed.

She feels him behind her, warmth and movement a contrast to her cool, still flesh. He loves her this way, alive enough to be his, but dead enough to have no will or agency of her own. Her mind is free-floating, drifting over impressions and memories, shifting from one to another by association that is loose and wandering, as aimless as his kisses and his hands.

The Living Doll charm is reviled, she thinks as his fingers drift over her collarbone; it is associated inextricably with rape. Unlike the Imperius, it has little other practical purpose. The subject cannot be animated without the proximity of the caster, and the cool, porcelain-like taint of the flesh makes concealing its use impossible. It is one of the most ancient spells, with a long and notorious history.

She has used it herself, once, in anger and grief and desperate need to wound. She was captured while casting it on the Longbottoms; it hit with all her power, and they never awoke. She thinks of them sometimes when he has her like this; imagines a life free-floating, forever waiting to be brought to life by a saviour who will never come. The thought had haunted her in Azkaban, uncomfortably close to the fear, buried in the shallow graves of her mind, that he would never come back.

(Dimly, she feels tingling in her scalp. His fingers through her hair is one of her favourite things, and she wishes she could feel it properly, could sink her head back and let her lips fall open with a sigh).

In her own world, the history of the charm is more nuanced. She and Rodolphus had used it by mutual agreement for the first two years of their marriage. Her father had not extended her the mercy of the Living Doll as a girl, preferring to take her with violence, and she had found her wifely duties intolerable. As it happened, she was barren, and that had made the question (and her wifely duties) moot.

Rodolphus had been considerate, though, and she had learned that her body was capable of pleasure, when her mind and her fears didn't get in the way. So when the Dark Lord had made his intentions towards her clear, she had found the courage to show him in her mind the things she could not put into words.

Her Lord's expression had darkened, and he had turned and left her without a word. She had fallen into a chair, weeping, believing she had lost him before she'd even had him, but within hours he was back, drawing her up, drawing her close. "He's gone," he'd muttered as he kissed her, and sure enough, there had been an owl a short time later. Cygnus had died badly, every violation he had visited on her returned tenfold.

Her Lord had been patient, for a man accustomed to getting his own way. He could see her fears in her mind before she spoke them; he always knew when to pull back and give her space. She had known that he could; she had never dreamed that he would. But he had surprised her. Perhaps it was simply a determination not to fail, not to be denied; perhaps it was something deeper. She had never known and never presumed to guess.

She hadn't questioned it, the first time he had expressed a wish to use the Living Doll. He still needed to be careful with her back then; she had assumed he wanted a night of indulgence of his own desires, and hadn't begrudged it.

He had surprised her then, as well.

Now, she feels him wrap his arms around her from behind. His hands close on her breasts, resting there, utterly without curiosity or movement. She stands there, cool and still, her eyes staring straight ahead, looking at the room without really seeing. She perceives colour and shape without deriving meaning or form. She can remember complex thoughts from the past, but cannot create new ones in the here and now.

"Bella," he murmurs, and she wants to reply, but cannot. The desire does not convert into movement. Her jaw will not fall; her tongue will not raise to the roof of her mouth. They remain obstinately still, as though glued in place.

Her silence pleases him. His arms press her more firmly, hands gently kneading flesh. The flesh of her breast warms beneath his will, and yields. Her nipples stay slack; his attention has not moved there yet.

He bows his forehead to her shoulder, and allows the thoughts to flow from him to her. Something he would never do at any other time. It is a memory, comforting in its familiarity. She has seen it before.

It is her Lord as a child, in the graveyard at the orphanage where he grew up. Near his mother's grave is a statue of a Muggle named Mary; to her Lord, the statue is of his mother. More than once, he held onto the statue as he holds her now. He finds her intractable silence a comfort. His mother's statue has no judgment of him, no fear. She will stay with him there forever, if he wishes it, endlessly taking his rage and misery and giving the relief of silence.

Bella will, too.

When, in his childhood imaginings, he thinks of bringing his mother to life, he imagines this. Imagines silent acceptance. Imagines that she warms and yields, but no more than that. To him, this is perfect love.

She wonders sometimes, when the spell is lifted, whether just one kind word would have been enough. If, just once back then, he had been judged kindly rather than harshly. Then, could he imagine a love that moves and acts? That is more than just silently there?

She doesn't know. But the very wondering makes her want to make the Muggles pay.

Slowly, the memory fades, and his mind and hers grow still. The slow, dream-like activity of her minds tapers off without his mind to stimulate it. Memories fall silent. She stands there, heavy and still, all of her focused on whatever sensation he gives her. His mouth, closing delicately on her shoulder, her flesh there growing soft and warm. Movement of his hands in her peripheral vision as he reaches around her; dimly, she matches the movement to others in her memories and understands that he is undressing her.

When her dress has fallen to the floor, his hands drift down. Warmth rushes ahead, blood moving, bringing her breasts to life; the feeling is abrupt and lush and her nipples ache with need. She feels the tingle of life racing on, down through her belly, deep into her core. She feels dim throbbing in her clit as his palms close around her breasts; her nether lips swell and part. Inside her, walls pulse, kneading at something not yet there.

And still she stands there, looking without seeing, taking whatever he wants to give. Giving the relief of peace and silence.

Her legs come to life under his will, just enough to part before falling still. Her body shifts, torso forward, hips tilted back. Then stillness again, broken only by the gentle warmth inside her, bubbling and overflowing, hot and wet.

When she feels his cock nudge at her entrance, she wants to give a long, low sigh. Wants to push back. Wants to groan when it reaches her, when it grinds inside her, when her walls mould around him and hold on tight. Wants to match the flooding inside her with flooding sounds and shuddering and need.

But she can only feel him and what he does to her, her whole world centered on it. All she can feel of her body is open and full. Her body cannot take him more fully than he chooses, but nor can it repel him as it sometimes does, reflexively, even now.

If it is a compromise that brings him closer to her, it is also one that brings her closer to him.

She cannot close her eyes, but she allows the dimness of her vision to take hold. Colours and shapes meld together as he rolls into her, the ridge of his cockhead making an exquisite, aching path inside her. Friction in grooves, twin heat of movement and heat replacing cold. Her hips cannot move, but inside she seizes him, shuddering, insides twitching, a cry that reaches their bodies but not their ears.

He presses his head into her neck, and rasps out a hoarse, needy sound. Rasps out her name. Rasps it with love. Warmth floods her, and for a split-second she thinks it's his seed but then she realises it's her blood. She is wholly alive, and he's whirling her around, kissing her hard and needy and urgent as she winds her arms around him, as she shivers and cries out his name. The shock of sudden heat all over, the tingling of blood leaves her weak-kneed, and they collapse feverishly to the floor. The slate is cold on her back and his flesh is hot on her front, and his weight pressing into her feels like his cock pressing inside her.

Between hasty kisses and deep, plundering thrusts, she thinks, Now. It has to be now. There may never be another moment.

Even as he brings her up to the brink, she gathers them. Every memory and thought. Everything he has ever been to her. She holds them, just behind the veils of her mind. Holds them ready.

His cock spills over inside her, and she lets go. Receives and gives, shivering and crying out. Her body overflows and her mind does too.

His face hovers over her, working furiously. Angry and touched and hurt and tender all at once. He opens his mouth but no words come out. As though on the verge of a great decision. Her body falls cold and still as he grapples with it.

"Finite!" he roars at last, and instantly she is alive once more, and so is he, filling her anew. Plundering her mouth, her neck. Filling her deep and hard and strong. Choking out her name as she grips him, as she urges him on, as she strokes his face and kisses him as she has never kissed him.

When, at last, he slows, when at last they slump together on the cold slate floor, she wonders if he will speak of it, speak of reasons or love.

He doesn't. Not then. Not ever.

But each time after, he will break the spell, let her in as surely as he shut her out. He will crave her passion as well as her silence, one after the other in turns.

They break and re-make each other, she thinks, over and over, and that's love enough.

END