The Masque
Chapter 3b
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Title: The Masque 3b of 6 (~~3000 words) (total length
~12,000 words and counting)
Pairing: Snape/Bill
BETA'D
Part target="_blank">1
target="_blank">2
target="_blank">3a
A/N: Posted for scribbulus_ink's Classic Cannon challenge. I chose The Ballade
of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde - a 4000 word poem.
A/N2: There is no way that I can possibly thank my beta src="Masque3b_files/image001.gif" alt="[info]" v:shapes="_x0000_i1025">
enough for this. She tweaked my rambling prose into something exquisite, and
I'm in awe of her help. Thank you so very very much.
For src="Masque3b_files/image001.gif" alt="[info]" v:shapes="_x0000_i1026">
hope that even though this is a bunch of crap and angst, and general awfulness,
it cheers you up some :)
(note Lj does not want me to post this in one part - so I'm splitting it into
two)
They glided past, they glided fast,
Like travellers through a mist:
They mocked the moon in a rigadoon
Of delicate turn and twist,
And with formal pace and loathsome grace
The phantoms kept their tryst.
The doors clanged open again. Severus could see it in his mind’s eye. The
warder pacing up to Bill’s cell, opening the door and leading the young man to
his demise. Bill going along, neither willing nor screaming for mercy. Just his
usual equitable self, as if death was merely another adventure from which there
was no return. Severus neglected to realize that it was morning, the harsh bars
of sunlight merely providing an added layer to his prison. He did not realize
that the call was for breakfast, that the other inmates were waking up and
performing the meager ablutions allowed within their cells. He was sinking into
the mattress, shoulders heaving, on the verge of tears. A hand came to rest on
his shoulder. Bill.
With mop and mow, we saw them go,
Slim shadows hand in hand:
About, about, in ghostly rout
They trod a saraband:
And the damned grotesques made arabesques,
Like the wind upon the sand!
It had to be a mirage. There was no other excuse that Severus’s tortured mind
could take. Without even thinking it, without wishing for it more than he had
wished for it night after night, weak and alone in his bed, he grasped Bill’s
head and forced him down into a kiss.
It was not a decent kiss, and not a sort of kiss from which poetry and prose is
begat. Rather, it was a harsh confirmation of the reality of Bill to Severus’s
mouth, tongues rasping like sharkskin against each other. Stark heat and
response, and Severus could feel Bill getting more and more excited, moving control
over into his own hands. Severus yielded. A few more minutes and Bill pulled
back.
“I did not do it.”
At that moment, Severus believed him.
With the pirouettes of marionettes,
They tripped on pointed tread:
But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear,
As their grisly masque they led,
And loud they sang, and long they sang,
For they sang to wake the dead.
They sat down on the bed together, hands intertwined in hair. Severus was
shocked at the nearness, shocked at the completion, and more than a little on
edge from the fact that the warders could walk in at any moment. However, it
seemed that Bill had a story to tell, and Severus was loath to stop him.
“My sister…” Bill stuttered and stopped. A gnarled claw grasped at his hand.
“We all lost something in this war, didn’t we, Severus?” Bill stroked Severus’s
hand. “I lost my boyfriend, my sister, my only chance at love.”
Severus tried not to read into this frank and forward statement, but the blue
eyes boring into his forced him to acknowledge the veracity of this claim.
“My sister…my sister was sleeping with my boyfriend. I did not know until that
day. I came home and found them in bed together. Neville…”
Bill broke off at the startled gasp. His eyes grew even sadder – if that were
at all possible.
“You too?”
Severus nodded.
“I found them together. He was lying, spent, on the bed and unclothed. And yet
he – he told me that there was nothing between them. That it wasn’t what it
looked like.”
Severus found a fragile assent and learned that his heart could break again,
time and time, crushed into powdered crystal.
“He picked up one of my knives, and brought it up to his throat. I didn’t know
what he was going to do, honestly, I thought that he was going to kill himself
with my blade. I could not allow that.”
'Oho!' they cried, 'The world is wide,
But fettered limbs go lame!
And once, or twice, to throw the dice
Is a gentlemanly game,
But he does not win who plays with Sin
In the secret House of Shame.'
Bill’s tears dropped in a steady rhythm and stained his grey robe in running
blotches.
“I reached forward as fast as I could, but he was there, and he was too quick
for me. He sliced her throat. She did not even see it coming. One moment he was
threatening his own death, the next, she was leaking blood into my mattress.”
Severus was cold with shock.
“He started hacking, started telling me that this was how much he loved me, his
pleas of love interspersed with the grate of knife on gristle.”
Bill looked down.
“He told me how everything he ever did was for us.”
Bill grasped Severus’s hand.
“He told me that it had been a lie, about you. He told me that you never raped
him.”
The edges of Severus’s world came tumbling down.
No things of air these antics were,
That frolicked with such glee:
To men whose lives were held in gyves,
And whose feet might not go free,
Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things,
Most terrible to see.
Bill risked raising his head. Severus’s eyes told him more than he ever wanted
to know about him and Longbottom.
“I could not let him die, Severus, you must believe me. I loved him so
very much, and even as he was sitting there, telling me he had lied to me, to
everyone, and telling me that he had put you in prison, I could not find it in
my heart to turn him in. I ushered him out of the flat, and lay down on my bed,
next to my sister, thinking. Someone would have to take the blame for this, and
I refused to allow Neville to be subjected to a life at St. Mungo’s with his
parents. I knew of his almost pathological fear of that place. And I did not
want to live, did not want to go on any longer without Charlie, Ron, the twins.
My last sibling was lost, and my father would not miss me much. He had made
that clear. I would overdose on drugs and fade softly out. It would be the best
course of action.”
Severus was openly shaking now, and Bill wound an arm around him.
“The only thing which stayed my hand at first was the fact that I had placed
you in prison. It was I that had told my parents about you and Neville, had
stopped them vouching for you. They had agreed that a rapist like you ought to
be punished. I’m…so sorry, Severus, but there wasn’t any way that I could have
made it better after the fact, and it just added to my burden and to the pain I
was feeling. I whipped back the bottle cap and downed the entire thing.”
Around, around, they waltzed and wound;
Some wheeled in smirking pairs;
With the mincing step of a demirep
Some sidled up the stairs:
And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,
Each helped us at our prayers.
Severus rocked backward and forward, his pain evident.
“They found me too soon. An half-hour or so, and I would have died. But don’t
you see it, Severus? Don’t you see why I’m not fighting any more? I ought to
have died then, and I ought to be laid out and buried in a forgotten corner of
the Weasley plot. I killed you, sure as if I had killed you by my own hand. My
life is forfeit to yours. I’m so sorry.”
Bill got up, and made as if to leave.
Severus raised his head, trying desperately to seize control of the spasms of
his body and subdue them.
“Bill.”
“Yes, Severus.”
“Fight.”
Bill looked down, tears glazing his vision once more.
“It’s too late for that now. I’m so sorry, Severus.”
The morning wind began to moan,
But still the night went on:
Through its giant loom the web of gloom
Crept till each thread was spun:
And, as we prayed, we grew afraid
Of the Justice of the Sun.
Breakfast that morning was a somber affair. Lucius’s probing eyes catalogued
everything, from Bill’s debauched pout to Severus’s garments slightly askew,
the wild-eyed look permeating every darting glance. Severus could see him
flicking through the possibilities, his curiosity never sated. A rape, perhaps?
A proposition, an assignation. Sex pure and simple? Possibly a deal,
contraband, smuggling. Yet Lucius was highly predictable, and Severus allowed a
smile to flit over his features. Excellent, Lucius was even more puzzled now.
Pettigrew was, as always, oblivious to anything other than the shallowest undercurrents.
That was a good thing, all told: the shroud which had descended over Severus
during the night would not do well under the unskilled probing of those fat
little fingers. Severus mopped up his swill with a hardened crust. Let him
just get through the day, be able to mull this over at night.
The moaning wind went wandering round
The weeping prison-wall:
Till like a wheel of turning steel
We felt the minutes crawl:
O moaning wind! what had we done
To have such a seneschal?
The day passed, as all days were wont to do in that prison. Meticulous and
mindless, Severus paid the repetitive tasks no heed, conscious of nothing but
the lack of Bill beside him. Finally it was time for exercise, for a paced
meander around the courtyard.
He knew that Bill’s presence near him would brook comment. They had never been
particularly close; no more than a cursory glance. Someone had probably heard
something this morning. Even the quiet mutterings through blocks of concrete
were enough to alert the numerous ears of the prison. It would be enough,
coupled with their habiliment at breakfast, to spark some obscene rumors:
Severus knew this. Though would the rumors really be that far from the truth?
At last I saw the shadowed bars,
Like a lattice wrought in lead,
Move right across the whitewashed wall
That faced my three-plank bed,
And I knew that somewhere in the world
God's dreadful dawn was red.
Bill stepped into pace beside him. Severus let out a breath he did not even
know he had been holding, and felt the grit underneath his feet lighten. His
face lost years, though he himself did not remark that until Lucius, battered
and beaten by the vagaries of prison life, commented upon it later. Lucius was
always one to take special note of a person’s appearance, no matter how
insalubrious the interpretation he put upon it might be.
They chatted of inconsequential things, talked about school and potions and the
war. They avoided topics such as betrayal, Longbottom, death and sacrifice.
Intuitively, each knew that the other would not wish to break this fragile
harmony, shatter the edged counterpoint between the fantasy painting they
wished to create, and the reality in which they found themselves. Bill might
blame himself, but Severus thought that jail was more than his due.
At six o'clock we cleaned our cells,
At seven all was still,
But the sough and swing of a mighty wing
The prison seemed to fill,
For the Lord of Death with icy breath
Had entered in to kill.
The bars clanged shut. Would this be the night? Would Severus have to wait out
the rest of eternity given only one brief glimpse into Bill? One touch of lips,
hands, taste and texture? Severus knew that it could be, that it was likely,
and he was loath to rest until the witching hour was over, until the guards had
settled into their final shift, until Bill was safe.
It was baseless paranoia, watching him like this. One never needed to fear what
one knew – fear implied an unknown. Yet his eyes still ached, open, and his
breath still came ragged, and then the doors opened again. Yes. Bill’s time had
come.
Severus could not stop the wracking sobs from coming as he lay himself face
down into his pillow.
He did not pass in purple pomp,
Nor ride a moon-white steed.
Three yards of cord and a sliding board
Are all the gallows' need:
So with rope of shame the Herald came
To do the secret deed.
Bill went with nary a fuss, calm and composed as always. The only thing which
marked his passage, marked him as a changed man from that morning, was a
whispered thought –
probably more to himself than to Severus, who just caught it above his labored
breathing:
“You. I’ll be waiting for you.”
Severus bit through his lip in an effort to stop the yell rising from his
throat.
We were as men who through a fen
Of filthy darkness grope:
We did not dare to breathe a prayer,
Or to give our anguish scope:
Something was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.
There was no escape now. He could hear Bill’s measured tread as it descended
down, down…dead man walking, dead man walking, the hysterical cries of
the crow which made its perch upon the gallows. Bill was dead, walking out of
there already dead, unable to make peace with the world and unable to ever know
that Severus had forgiven his betrayal.
Severus hoped against hope that the afternoon previous had shown Bill his
forgiveness, in deed if not in word. He hoped that wherever Bill went, he would
go quickly and painlessly. He hoped that he would soon follow.
And then he realized that Bill was dead. Hope was now pointless.
For Man's grim Justice goes its way,
And will not swerve aside:
It slays the weak, it slays the strong,
It has a deadly stride:
With iron heel it slays the strong,
The monstrous parricide!
Spending the night awake was worse this second time. To have lost something he
was only on the verge of finding, something he desired with every fiber of his
being, happiness, peace…to be rudely cut from them was pure torture. Severus
watched as the ghosts of everyone he had killed filed past him, taunting him in
his delirium. He watched as he murdered everyone, he watched as he went up to
the podium and slaughtered Bill with his own mangled hands, in a myriad of
ways.
Cutting, hacking the head off, holding it aloft by the red plait. Driving an
axe down time and time again on the exposed neck. Slowly running his hands
across him, leaning in to kiss him, and wrapping his fingers around the creamy
neck. Feeling the last breath being sucked out of Bill’s body with a bitter,
Judas kiss.
Severus could feel his betrayal like a knife in his heart. Bill was gone. He
was gone. He would have to face Lucius on the morrow alone.
We waited for the stroke of eight:
Each tongue was thick with thirst:
For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate
That makes a man accursed,
And Fate will use a running noose
For the best man and the worst.
This time he knew that the warders were coming. The gates grated, and it was
such a grotesque sound. He knew where that noise lead. Everything was
supersaturated, colors and tones and textures, and every shadow, every
movement, had a sort of gallows-humor: a startled arabesque into the path of
death. Severus sat on the edge of his cot, staring at the empty cell in front
of him, quietly going insane.
We had no other thing to do,
Save to wait for the sign to come:
So, like things of stone in a valley lone,
Quiet we sat and dumb:
But each man's heart beat thick and quick,
Like a madman on a drum!
The cell door was opened, and Severus fell in step with Lucius, more out of
habit than any desire for his company. He could not turn round to see the pity
veiled in those luminous grey eyes. Lucius’s wan complexion told him
everything, showed that even the unflappable Malfoy façade did break under the
strain of quick sharp death. Severus could feel the concern radiate from him,
could feel Lucius’s hand approach his arm, then pull away. There was no telling
how Severus would react to touch, and Lucius knew this first hand. He had been
there at Severus’s first kill, and had reached out to congratulate the new
acolyte. And then, sharply, bloodstained fingers had wrapped around his neck,
marring his robes and nearly throttling the life out of him. Severus in a rage
was not someone Lucius wished to startle from the depths of a shell-shocked
Severus again.
With sudden shock the prison-clock
Smote on the shivering air,
And from all the gaol rose up a wail
Of impotent despair,
Like the sound that frightened marshes hear
From some leper in his lair.
Sitting down at breakfast, Severus went through the motions of macerating the
food on his plate. There was no way that he was going to be able to eat today,
with the replay of his crimes moving through his memory with cinematographic
clarity. Pettigrew settled his bulk down on Severus’s other side, and he only
hoped that the rat would be able to read the signals and keep his mouth shut.
That was not to be. Despite Lucius’s glares, Pettigrew opened his mouth and
belched out the one obscenity that Severus’s mind was not ready to hear.
“So they killed the sororicide last night, did they? Good fucking riddance to
the bastard.”
Severus leapt across the table.
And as one sees most fearful things
In the crystal of a dream,
We saw the greasy hempen rope
Hooked to the blackened beam,
And heard the prayer the hangman's snare
Strangled into a scream.
As he moved, everything seemed transparent, suspended in a glass of gelatinous
fluid, and Severus saw red. He saw Bill’s neck snap under the noose, saw his
legs flail in one final dance. He saw the cream skin suffuse with congealed
blood, turning black, grotesque. He could see the body being buried; maybe even
in the pit he himself had dug. He could see the quicklime eating into it, flesh
etched cleanly from bone. He wanted to attack the system, attack the murderers,
and attack the Weasleys for being so ineffably stupid. But instead he launched
himself across the table at Pettigrew, the one man stupid enough to insult his
beloved on the morning after his death.
And all the woe that moved him so
That he gave that bitter cry,
And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
None knew so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.
Severus was placed into solitary confinement after breaking each bone in Pettigrew’s
face. Upon finally coming out, he had lost the final vestige of his sanity.