LIfe in an Alien Land 3: Minor Household Gods

Thanks to Jilliane for her wonderful red-mousing on this first chapter.

Also thanks to all who are returning from Life 1 and 2. This story won't be a grindingly brutal as the last one, but there will be some dark themes. I hope you enjoy.

Chapter 1: War and Remembrance

"Get up, Weasley." Tonks voice boomed through Ron's head as her wandlight spilled through the bars of his cell. He winced, then covered his eyes as the light shone directly into them. His fists, covered in scratches, scrapes, and gouges, pained him as he did so. Tonks said, "You've got to quit doing this, Ron."

Ron shrugged off the stuporous sensation of sleep, feeling the aftermath of his latest binge behind his eyes and in the roiling of his stomach. "Bloody hell. Can't you leave off? "

"No." Tonks entered the cell, her bright presence making the space seem smaller. "Your Mum wanted me to fetch you before this got to the papers. Now, get up you bloody git, and let's roll. I need to get back before Lucius starts to worry."

"Yeah, mustn't forget that you're married to a Malfoy," Ron said, standing. He felt pins and needles in his bum as he took a step. "Crikey, how long was I out?"

Tonks responded, "Long enough."

Ron turned to the toilet in the back of the cell, "D'you mind? Give a bloke some privacy."

"I've seen it all before." Tonks tone was bored, but she turned away as he unfastened his trousers. The stream of urine hitting the bowl hissed loudly in the cell. Once done, he turned to leave. Tonks admonished, "Bloody hell, Weasley, wash your hands."

Ron shrugged but did as he was told. He couldn't seem to do anything that pleased anyone these days, why should his personal hygiene be any different? When he finished, Tonks twirled her index finger and Ron, used to her non-verbal commands, turned away from her, wrists crossed behind his back. She fixed him with non-magical zip cuffs, an innovation implemented by the new Muggle police force that had invaded their world, then escorted him out of the cell.

The property office was manned by a bored Muggle bloke who barely glanced up at them as he shoved a large yellow envelope through a magically enhanced plexiglass wall. Tonks took off the cuffs so Ron could sign for what had been in his pockets when he had been taken in. The Muggle turned back to a closed-circuit TV without a word to either of them.

Once they came up from the holding-area, Tonks stopped Ron by the simple expedient of standing in front of him. "You know this has got to stop."

Ron felt his face bunch in that ugly way he knew it did when he was being reprimanded. "I'm not hurting anyone."

"Yes, you are." Tonks' answer was soft, as if she wasn't judging him exactly, she was just exasperated. "That bloke you beat up was pretty bad off. You're lucky he isn't filing a complaint. Not to mention that your little stunt got me dragged out of bed on my first night off in weeks. Your Mum cries about you every night. Ginny and Snape have had to take you in when you're too blotto to move from the Hog's Head, and Hermione..."

"Don't talk about her," Ron warned. "Don't mention her to me ever again." Ron pulled away from Tonks' extended hand. "You don't know what... She was always too good for me, and I lost her to him."

"You mean Draco?" Tonks asked. "He's dead, and Hermione needs you to be strong for her. She's still your friend. Whatever happened between you, I'm sure if you just talked about it..."

"Sod off, Tonks. You don't know a damned thing about it. Quit trying to play Agony Aunt and go fuck your Death Eater" Ron snapped, and pushed past the Auror. "Why don't you all just leave me alone and let me die in peace?"

He made it out of the Atrium of the MInistry before he vomited the acidic smelling alcohol out of his stomach, making his head pound and leaving a putrid taste in his mouth. He wiped his lips with the worn sleeve of his shirt, careful of his painful hands, and leaned against the wall, still warm from the late July sun that had set hours ago. He closed his eyes, letting the not so distant sounds of the London summer night lull him into a restful state of gloomy acceptance. He had made his bed when he handed Hermione over to Malfoy, and now he had to lie in it.

&*&*&

Tonks returned to the Manor, grimacing in consternation as she tripped over the lintel of the massive double doors of the front entryway. It had been over a year since Voldemort had been vanquished, two years since she lost her son and was forced to marry Lucius Malfoy, and three since her soul had been ripped from her the night Remus died. The thought of him always brought an burning ache to her chest. Normally, she pushed the pain aside; the swirling images, the memories they had been building, the future they had been denied; but seeing Weasley tonight brought it all rushing back. His expression reminded her of the one she always saw on Remus' face, sad and more than a little self-hating.

She wasn't sure what Lucius had done to the boy, but it had been something that the youngest Weasley male had regretted enough to destroy himself and everyone around him. Tonks knew that feeling well. Her year on the run with her mother, her son, and the small band of women that they had collected along the way, had been horrible. She had done things she never thought she would have done to survive, things that she would never admit to, if asked about them. It had been when Tonks was occupied on an intelligence gathering mission for the scattered Order that the small band had been captured by Death Eaters. She had had no choice but to turn herself over to Voldemort; her son was the most important person in the world to her.

And it had all been for nothing.

Snape had told her he had seen her mother drained by Sanguini and her son taken away. They were both probably dead. Vampires weren't known for their merciful qualities. If she only she hadn't been away, if only she hadn't thought her mission more important than keeping her son safe but...it was so much spilt butterbeer. Teddy was gone forever, most likely dead, and Tonks was forced to live in this mausoleum, a monument to pureblood conformity and power.

Sometimes she hated Lucius sodding Malfoy.

She knew they were totally unsuited for one another. He was cool, patrician, overbearing. She was hot-tempered, plebeian, and...well...if she were honest with herself, she was just as overbearing in her own way. She was an Order member, and he a Death Eater. He was a Tory, and she voted Labour party, now that the wizarding world voted in the general elections. She shouldn't want to fuck him at all. She shouldn't want to feel the thick drag of his cock in her, but she did.

That was the problem. They got along nowhere else but the bedroom. Yes, they put a good face on their relationship. They acted the proper couple in public, but in private, there were long stretches, whole days, of silence between them. They still shagged like monkeys, but he had started a slow withdrawal of his attention after Draco died, and Tonks didn't know how to reach through that icy exterior to find the passionate man that she had seen in their first days together.

It didn't help that Snape's Obliviation of her memories of the night they were married was breaking down. To be fair, he had warned her it might, that he had not cast the spell in some time, and that he was no Obliviator. She remembered blood and agony and flashes of Lucius' blank face as he raped her over and over, for the entertainment of that monster, and his pet, dear Auntie Bella. She recalled Lucius' horror in the aftermath of it, his tears, and the way he recoiled from her the first time she spoke to him after that night. More than anything else, she thought, it was that violence and pain that they could not surmount.

Tonks walked past the library and noticed a light burning under the closed door. She may as well get this over with. He would want to know how Ronald Weasley had fucked up again.

&*&*&

Lucius watched his young wife enter the room, her gauche clothing and bright hair an affront to the mannered setting in which she trod. He lifted his gaze to her face, and then returned his attention to the documents before him. Ronald Weasley had become a liability.

"Darling, how nice to see you." He let the words of endearment curl in the air like an acrid wisp of smoke. He knew how much she hated them. Their relationship consisted of shagging like rabid Crups, and long stretches of silence. Much as his and Narcissa's relationship had been, but without the mutual affection and a child between them. He told himself that he could not ask for more, could not dream that one night the werewolf's name, cried out in her sleep, would be replaced by his in her dreams. Lucius had no illusions that he could ever be anything more to her than an encumbrance she must endure.

She had become Lucius' penance for all his evil deeds, and he resented her for it.

He rose from his seat, not wishing to establish the distance he usually needed in these situations. Tonight he had a yearning to take his wife in more than a desperate coupling to sate their physical desires and he would not be put off. With an inclination of his head, he invited her to take a seat next to him on the couch in front of the fire. The very same one from which Miss Granger had observed their consummation. Lucius had never told his young wife of that interesting event. He had always rather liked being watched. He had indulged in that particular activity more than once with Severus, who was convinced that the lovelies Lucius shagged before his marriage to Narcissa would have nothing to do with him. The poor sod never understood how appealing he was to the opposite sex. He may not have had the looks of an angel as Lucius did, but he certainly had the dark charm of the devil. Lucius did think that Miss Weasley was convincing him of his appeal; he had caught them in compromising positions all over the Manor during their sojourn at his home.

Lucius took a seat next to his wife, curling his arm over the back of the couch as she sat. He noticed her grimace, but disregarded it in favour of stroking her lithe back as she settled into the seat. "I take it you retrieved Mr. Weasley with no hint of scandal?"

His tone added the "once again" that he wisely decided to leave unsaid. Weasley's self-imposed suffering was a point of contention between them, and he was in no mood to deal with his wife's heated diatribe on why they should expend the effort to save the youngest Weasley male. Ronald Weasley had made his bed, when he threw his supposed true love to the very Death Eaters he hated so much, to save his family. That Lucius was the instrument of his destruction, delivering the message to the boy, did not matter, even though it gave said instrument a slight pang when he thought of it. If Ronald Weasley was a man of such high principals, and had any brains at all, he would have seen the situation for what it was and not done what he did. Lucius' actions had merely been an effort to salvage the situation, much as he had sent a Healer to Snape's aid when he had to have surgery as a result of the brutal attentions of that disgusting werewolf.

Lucius winced inwardly. Severus, as well as Weasley's sister and Lucius' own wife's late husband, was one of those creatures. Old beliefs may have to die in order for Lucius to carve out his niche in this brave new world.

Claire, known as Tonks to the rest of the world, had been speaking at some length for several moments before Lucius realised it, and had apparently stopped in mid-sentence. Once she had his attention again, she spat, "I don't know why I even try with you, Malfoy. You seem to do as you please anyway."

She rose and flung herself from the room, nearly knocking over one of a pair of the priceless jade fu dogs that his great grandfather had brought back from China as a wedding gift to Abraxas and his bride.

As suddenly as a summer squall, Lucius' marginally hopeful mood evaporated. He would never be able to win his wife's affections.

&*&*&

Ron's night had started around ten, in a discotheque frequented by an element of the London gay community that catered to the rougher varieties of sex. Ron liked it when he could rough up the poofs, and then have them begging for him to bugger them. It seemed like poetic justice for all he'd had to endure during his time in the werewolf Colony.

His rape by Greyback had been the start of it. Once the old Alpha had fucked him, Ron had been considered fair game by the others. There wasn't a day that went by that he wasn't forced to suck some bloke's oozing cock, or was forced to bend over and take it up the arse. The worst days were when he had to do both at the same time. While one bloke choked him with cock, another made him bleed by pounding him from behind. There had been a few times when he had gotten off; a few of the werewolves had taken care to lube him up, give him kisses, or jerk him off, and even one that had let Ron pound into his hole with abandon. That bloke had liked it rough, and Ron had made him bleed many times. At first, he told himself it was the blood he liked, that and the high wails of pain. The revenge was sweet, but if he were honest with himself, it was with that bloke that he had learned that pussy, as good as it was, could not compare to a tight, hot arsehole squeezing around him as he pounded away.

Especially if the bloke he was ploughing had been properly roughed up beforehand.

Not that Ron got any real lasting enjoyment out of it. It was just fucking and rage for him. It felt good while he did it, but left him empty afterward. It was like having Yule dinner with no pudding, or Quidditch with no snitch.

Tonight, Ron had found an appropriate bloke and taken him back to his flat. Perhaps he had let himself get a little too drunk; he'd been a little too rough, the bloke he'd been fucking had started screaming, and before he knew it, a nosy bint up the hall had called the police. The cops didn't want to interfere in what they considered to be a private matter, but nonetheless, had taken Ron in to sleep it off after they asked the poof if he was okay.

That was how he found himself alone at his flat at two a.m. on a Saturday night, cleansing blood off the walls and floor. He thought he might be out of control.

&*&*&

Tonks spent the better part of the night fighting off tears. Lucius had not come to her room as he usually did to bid her goodnight and take his place in her bed. As strange as it seemed, she missed his presence when they fought, a thing they did with increasing regularity. He had become a warm body to hold onto when the nightmares came, a human security blanket when she needed him.

She snuffled once again, trying to keep the tears from falling and heard her door open a crack.

"Claire?"

She flipped over on her side, facing away from him. She didn't need his pity any more than she needed him. The door opened wider, letting light spill in through the gloom. She felt the bed sag as Lucius sat on it. He ran his hand over her naked shoulder, her one concession to sleeping with him. "Claire, darling, let's not fight tonight."

He followed his words with a nibbling kiss up her back, his tongue burning away the pain and anger between them, at least for a moment. Tonks wiped the tears off her cheeks and turned over, taking his mouth with hers. He tasted of whisky and iniquity as he slid between her thighs. He took her as he was, still clothed in his trousers, which he had spelled open for ease of access. Tonks took his thrusts, meeting them with her own grinding motions. She arched toward the final goal, and helped herself along by thinking of Remus and his sweet lovemaking. She came just as Lucius did, barely able to contain Remus' name behind her tightly clamped lips.

Lucius grunted and pulled out, leaving his sticky mess for her to clean. He took off his trousers and rolled onto his side of the bed. Tonks rose to clean herself, but was stopped by his iron grip on her arm, his expression dark. "Don't. I want you to feel what I've left inside you. I want you to remember that you are my wife, not his anymore."

She spent the rest of the night beside Lucius, knowing that they would never find anything close to what she and Remus had, and it made her heart break a little, with each dribble of Malfoy's come that spilled out of her.


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