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December 28th, 2007
04:16 pm - 12 Days of Christmas Challenge: Day 3 Nightmares- Part 2
Once again my good friend lycoris is running the 12 Days of Christmas challenge. This time she even has a community for it (also a mirror one on insanejournal).
Day 3: Three Nightmares once again I fall short and only have two (and one I only scribbled whilst at St Bede's working on the newsletter today...) learning from last year's mistakes I am posting them into two seperate entries for linking purposes.
Part 2
Title: The Lingering Cold
Author: Lord Localfreak
Fandom: Harry Potter
Ship: Not relevant but LM/NM (Lucius/Narcissa) at a push.
Summary: Azkaban doesn't need Dementors, and once it has touched your soul, the cold will always linger.
It was cold. Freezing cold, his hands were numb with it, his bones ached; he could barely feel his toes. It was dark, but he felt sure if he could see more clearly his breath would be visible as white steam and his lips would be blue.
The wind was sharp tonight, biting along the lines of his cheekbones, pinching at the tip of his nose. He clenched his fingers into fists and felt their chill. They were so cold they felt bloodless, as if all the nerves and heat had shrivelled up and all that was left were long thin bones with a stretching of chapped, dry skin holding them together in the shape of hands. Blowing on them helped, but the cold seeped in just as quick after the initial brush of warm breath, his hands could not generate their own warmth. His teeth chattered; he had tried sitting upright, letting only his feet and rear touch against the stone floor, curled into himself, but his spine could not take that kind of abuse forever and he was forced to slump back and let the chill of the stones add to his sufferings. The stones were a punishment in themselves, magically retaining the feelings of horror and despair and death, the taste of misery over the years, they breathed it out into those who could not escape its clutches.
What he wouldn’t give for a warm fire, a cup of hot tea, a bowl of soup, simple things which, not so long ago, he had barely to think of wanting before they would have been brought to him. He tried to remember what life had been like before, the ballroom, the entrance hall, his childhood room- but they faded easily, the colours dimmed- he could remember them only as vague impressions which felt more like dreams of other worlds than anything real and true.
No one would come. No one could come.
It was filthy here; the smell made him feel wretchedly sick, the food was like nothing he’d ever tasted before in its revolting nature the filth was as bad as the cold. His scalp itched; he could feel the tats in his hair when he threaded his fingers through it. It had never, ever felt like this before. He could feel the filth spreading over him, like dust in a mausoleum, soil underground, the idea of a hot bath tortured him constantly. Every time he licked his lips he could almost feel the germs, the filth, the cold despair coming into him, he could not feel clean and he wished for just one warming charm, just one scourgify, a disinfectant spell.
The cold was swallowing him. He’d always imagined cold to be clean and white like snow on the ground, unsullied like the winter-blooms in his wife’s hair, ice sculptures on the lawn- this cold was a foul one, a filthy one, a death which rattled and wheezed like a congestion-sickness, it clawed with filthy frozen hands at his thoughts, at his lungs, at his heart and there was no one coming, no escape, no way out.
He wept.
The next morning Narcissa woke to find herself alone in the bed. Biting her lip she moved quickly down the stairs and relaxed only when she found him. In the chair pulled so close to the blazing fire it would have singed had it not been charmed against it, wrapped in a mountain of blankets sat her husband, his chin resting on his chest as he slept, arms curled around him, spine curved forward- so different from the proud posture he had once always held, even in repose. His neatly combed hair was thin and lank, his face pale and pinched. The bright summer sun blazed in through the bay windows, and did nothing to stop him shivering.
Author's Notes: At last, one where I reasonably like the end result!
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Comments:
| From: | (Anonymous) |
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| Date: | December 28th, 2007 - 09:41 am |
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| | | (Link) |
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This is chilling - we live Lucius's nightmare with him.
You may be one drabble short, but what you have written is excellent.
Lee.
^^ Thank you.
And yes, I do expect that I will from now on continue to fall short of the targets in terms of the number of fics. I'm not prolific, in fact I probably might more for these challenges fic wise than I write for the rest of the year so I generally consider myself okay if I've done at least one for each day (nearly, but not quite there yet.)
*cries*
This is wonderful. Apart from the fact I want to go and kill myself now, obviously, which is a side effect from this having been written so well.
I love it. Thoroughly human Lucius.
I'm being terribly mean to poor Lucius I know...:P hopefully my next few submissions will be a little less angst-riddled ;) but I won't promise!
Thank you :D
| From: | (Anonymous) |
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| Date: | December 29th, 2007 - 07:31 am |
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| | | (Link) |
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(versipellis)
Oh goodness. It's so plausible and IC and so horrible. Now I'm really shivering.
:) I'm glad...erm..that you liked, not ness. that you're shivering ;) but I'm still glad that it affected you ^^ |
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