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your zen is false

Chapter Three

A Vicious Plateau

. ... .

She fucks Bellatrix Black - beautiful and clever and popular - for the first time during her sixth year. It is December, and the cold wind batters bitterly against the worn stone of the castle. Freezing drafts seem to follow her everywhere, and her hands are icy to the touch no matter what spell she uses.

But she doesn't really notice the chill when her hands are buried in Bellatrix's hair as her whatever-she-is (Lily can't bring herself to think the word 'girlfriend' quite yet - that involves thinking the word 'lesbian', and she really can't bring herself to do so. She already thinks too much, and she doesn't want to peruse old memories to find evidence that either proves or disproves...that. She already thinks too much, and Bellatrix is supposed to be her distraction. That is how Lily justifies it, anyway. Yes, she is that stubborn and desperate) presses her against walls and makes her whimper quietly into lush, smirking lips. Lily's own lips are almost constantly kiss-swollen and red.

No one notices. No one knows. (At least, no one Lily is acquainted with.)

No one knows, and Lily likes it that way. She doesn't know what Bellatrix thinks about it, but she trusts her not-girlfriend to follow her wishes in this (because she is a Gryffindor and she trusts all the wrong people. She always has - her mum once told her it would get her killed one day).

It (the fucking - though Lily would call it something else, that is all it will ever be to Bellatrix, and Lily does not understand her lover yet; does not understand what she has gotten herself into) happens for the first time over Christmas Break. Bellatrix moves quickly, and Lily has no defences. (Potter never tried that angle. Later - later later later - she wishes that he had, just so she could have stood a chance.)

It goes like this: they are kissing, liquid and heat and in the same alcove where they first spoke, coincidentally enough. Lily recognizes nothing but the taste and the slick movement, and she is too entranced to protest when Bellatrix slowly unbuttons her robes. She moans, loud and desperate, when Bellatrix's thigh slides between hers and up, and Bellatrix bites Lily's lower lip as she does it. The kiss breaks off as Lily starts panting heavily, whimpering just a little (enough to let Bellatrix think privately that, yes, she chose correctly), and her head falls back, hitting the wall with a crack, as Bellatrix moves her thigh harder and faster and - gods, the world is blurring. Lily grinds down mindlessly, meeting Bellatrix movement for movement, and slumps against the wall and whines throatily when her not-girlfriend is suddenly not touching her. She blinks rapidly and opens her mouth to (not beg) ask (in a very unclear way) what is going on, but then Bellatrix is touching her again and unbuttoning her slacks and Lily can't stop the moan as she helps to take them off. Her knickers nearly go with them in her haste, but Bellatrix smirks (Lily doesn't see it) and ghosts her fingers lightly over the plain white cotton. Lily shudders and nearly slides down the wall as her knees get weak, but Bellatrix is suddenly holding her up and her elegant, aristocratic fingers are inside her knickers and stroking like - like the indescribable. Lily slams her head against the wall as she screams, and then her mouth finds Bellatrix's - only Bellatrix sucks her tongue for only a moment before trailing that wicked mouth down her pale neck to her shoulder and biting -

Right as her lover's fingers are inside and outside and stroking and caressing, and nothing should feel this good; she is falling and blinded and -

(Only the devil tastes so good.)

. ... .

January. She is closer to seventeen now than sixteen, and she forgets to count her wisdoms in the midst of the whirling fugue that is Bellatrix. Her lover fascinates and entrances her, and she loves it when Bellatrix plays her unique little games. They are mind games - power games, and isn't it so novel for Lily to actually grasp power? (She is powerless, usually - Prefect or no.) She loves it. She loves the perpetually half-lidded eyes of her lover that survey everything, judging (and Lily managed to draw her interest? That is power) and languid - she loves the way their bodies move and the way Bellatrix tastes and the way she can taste her lover, drive her wild (but that is so rare. Bellatrix so rarely allows that).

She loves how life is an amusing game to Bellatrix Black. She finds it so much easier to look at it that way rather than care and kill herself with worry and stress. So life is a game.

"I like your games," she voices lazily. They are lying - well, Lily is lying naked on a Transfigured bed in another abandoned classroom, staring at the ceiling blissfully; Bellatrix is traipsing lazily across the room and retrieving miscellaneous articles of clothing. She looks back at Lily when she hears the redhead's words.

And then she smiles (like a cougar would smile, no one at all thinks) and says, "You like my games, lovely?"

Too satisfied to feel irritated, Lily replies with only a hint of sarcasm. "Well, yes. That is what I said."

She hears Bellatrix padding across the stone floor and turns her head to meet Bellatrix's gaze. "Well, lovely Lily," she says, crawling over the bed and kneeling between Lily's still spread knees, "how would you like to play a new one?"

She leans over and kisses Lily - skillfully but lazily, and she doesn't understand how this is new - but then Bellatrix slips her hand between warm folds and rakes her other hand viciously down Lily's outer thigh. Lily's hips jerk in reflex and she screams into Bellatrix's mouth - and Sweet Mother does that feel good. She pumps her hips and ignores the liquid warmth trickling down her leg, spiraling into hazy pleasurepain.

It is the start of something else, and Lily was never very wise in the first place (just beautiful and clever and popular. She fears but not for herself, and she doesn't understand the wicked like she thinks she does. Foolish child).

January. She is closer to seventeen now than sixteen, and she forgets to count her wisdoms (however few they are, they might have sa - ) in the midst of the whirling fugue that is Bellatrix.

. ... .

It isn't the landing that kills you, Lily read somewhere one beautiful summer day. It's the fall.

It is February now, and she doesn't think about this. She looks at her robe-covered, rope-torn wrists as if she can see through the thick cloth and doesn't think about it.

But she really does think about this (not the fall) because she is thinking about how Bellatrix was always so fascinating and entrancing and playful in the beginning and how now - well, now her hips are bruised and there are cuts in fanciful shapes decorating her thighs (the landing). The gloss has been bled off, and Lily (not the fall it's the landing) is still there.

She didn't know why at first - and she still doesn't - but she is (addicted) in love (with pain and darkness) and she trusts Bellatrix (she trusts all the wrong people) not to take it too far. (And this is her: controlling the fear and the darkness and the fear of darkness by having decidedly rough sex with the closest thing to the personification of darkness she can find - because headaches are so debilitating and circled eyes cause questions and her parents could be killed at any time. She thinks too much, so she has decided not to think. So foolish.)

See, she is past the point of saying no. That point was a long time ago, and it was part of the story. There are so many stories, and Lily's choice was quietly and blindly made in that dark, dusty alcove that didn't matter - and shouldn't that mean that everything created there didn't matter? So she had never been worried, and she didn't even know that there was a choice. She still doesn't.

Choices like that don't exist to her. (She can't understand that perhaps there will be consequences - she is afraid for her parents, you see, but she still has a child's belief in her own immortality. Nothing can harm her, and she doesn't realize that she thinks like that.) All that exists is the present, and she isn't going to think about it because she thinks too much - and her parents could be killed at any time.

There is no thought of saying no. Not anymore - and as Bellatrix leads her into the dungeons, robe pockets clinking lightly as heavy handcuffs and new toys collide, Lily follows as if blindfolded.

(As if blind, and this - this tonight is when everything changes.)

So they reach one of those mysterious rooms that Hogwarts produces only on the third Thursday when someone giggles four times, and Bellatrix still hasn't looked at her.

It is making Lily feel uncertain - she says, against her better judgement, "Bellat - "

And Bellatrix has thrown her against the wall before she even finishes saying her name (that rolls off the tongue like diamonds, cold and sharp and beautiful beyond anything - beyond beyond beyond). Her red curls fly, glinting in the torchlight, and her skull collides with the stones with an awful sound.

(Bellatrix is crazy strong - and almost crazy, but not yet.)

When Lily can see again (when the lights have mostly stopped flashing and she is only seeing two of everything) she sees Bellatrix's tall figure standing over her. Half-lidded eyes, black holes against the pale of her face, stare down at her, and her pouty (sensual, bitable) lips are frozen in an ugly smile (...and isn't this going a little far?). "Who - " kick "are you - " kick "to call me by my name?"

Lily is curled up in a ball now, wet already and losing herself out of habit. (No, not too far. Bellatrix knows what she's doing, surely. Lily trusts her.) She pants out her line: "Nothing. I'm nothing. Just a mudblood."

(How has it come to this? How has she come to this? She doesn't know and doesn't think about it because it's all in fun, see. It is just some pain to put an edge on the maddening pleasure, and she enjoys it. She could say no.)

Bellatrix pulls her up by her hair (and the blood blends in with the fiery red, so no problem) and the world is shifting and the only solid is Bellatrix. Lily feels something warm along her hairline and that is Bellatrix's tonguing away blood.

"Yes," she murmurs. "That is all you are. Get on the bed, lovely."

And the world is tilting and the pain is everything, but Lily trusts Bellatrix to turn it all into pleasure. She stumbles to the bed.

She blacks out for a moment. When she comes to herself, there is cold metal encircling her ragged wrists. There is cold metal touching her stomach, and Lily ignores the dizziness, looking down to see Bellatrix straddling her and lazily cutting away her blouse with a knife. After a moment, she notices Lily looking at her. Her mouth curves with - with something, and then she slices the front of Lily's bra with a flick of her elegant right wrist.

"Lily," she says, apparently just to say it. Usually when Bellatrix says her name, it drips with you-are-mine and you-are-nothing and obey-me-now. Now, though - now all that is there is indifference, and for the first time Lily gets the sense that she is worthless. It had always been role-play to her, but now - now it isn't?

She doesn't have time to examine it, however, because now Bellatrix's warm weight is gone and so are her slacks - and her vision goes black for a second, but when it comes back she sees - Bellatrix and a strap-on that is impossibly large.

For the first time, a hint of fear cuts through the maelstrom of sensation. For the first time, she is sensible. For the first time - but she doesn't say no.

She could have said no, but it isn't an option to a big girl like her. (That word is not in her vocabulary in regards to Bellatrix. And would Bellatrix even listen...?)

But she could have said no.

. ... .

She wakes up the next morning alone (only Bellatrix is usually there with bandages and potions and aristocratic sarcasm, and why isn't she this time?) and still chained to the bed. The previous night is a blur, and the throbbing in her head is worse than any of the tension migraines she still sometimes gets. (They mostly stopped when she and Bellatrix...started. She is smart enough that she could realize that this is stress-relief at work, but she is weak Lily Evans and doesn't think on it. Avoidance is such a beautiful thing, isn't it?)

It takes her a miserable, cold half hour of stops and starts to get out of the handcuffs, and that is at the cost of a little blood magic that a Gryffindor shouldn't know. She tries to sit up but abandons the idea as her vision grays at the edges again. Her entire body hurts. She doesn't know how to process the enormity of it. The formerly white sheet is sticking to the dried cuts on her back (when did those happen?), and it takes fifteen long, painful minutes to try to peel it away gently. In the end, she gives up (her head is in agony) and rips the sheet away - she doesn't scream only because she is beyond that at the moment, warm blood running down her back to mix with cold sweat as white flashes through her vision. She breathes for infinity, becoming one with the mattress before trying to stand up again.

Zen. Zen. She is zen. Calm. White. Floating. Blank. Pain is nothing.

She stands - and immediately her knees buckle, her breath nauseous and small in her lungs even as she feels her body hit the stone floor.

The world goes black.
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A/N: Okay. This is them doing bondage and S&M all wrong - it's not like that and it shouldn't be like that. It has a bad rep, but with trust and full knowledge and consent, it's a perfectly good thing. Here, Bellatrix is simply mad and without finesse and - well, that would be giving things away (and if you can't read the writing on the wall, you don't deserve tits). But: YES, she is going too far.

In closing, concrit is much appreciated. If you really feel like being lazy, copy-pasting a favorite line or something would be appreciated as well. Everyone's support has been absolutely brill, just so you know. Thank you!