lights they blind me [gaius]

  It took a lot to unsettle Beatryx Abercrombie. Be an iron fist in a velvet glove. That was the maxim by which she had been raised; that was the way with which she carried herself. Bea knew when to play the soft, feminine side of her personality, and when to let the underlying cold strength of her true self shine through. Such was the way in which a woman of her station was raised. To dismiss socialites as mere cattle to produce heirs was to severely underestimate what they were bred for. Even women born into families unlike the Abercrombies could wield just as much power as their male counterparts - and only a fool would think social capital to be any less important than money. Money could buy power, but not respect. Respect was hoarded by the old families, a self-fashioned nobility that clung to what influence there was to be shared around and fiercely resisted attempts to join their inner circle. Infiltration was dilution; as much pandering as strong-arming needed to be done when trying to get something done.  All of this was known to the young woman, and that combined with the wealth and influence that had always been a part of her life made for an innate level of confidence that was rather difficult to rattle.

  That confidence felt rather lacking in the present moment. Uncharacteristically, Beatryx felt rather unsure of herself. Loathe to show it however, she stood before a gruff looking guard with a practiced face of disinterested boredom. He was taking his time rifling through the parchment before him, verifying that she did indeed have an scheduled visit due imminently. Sighing or tutting would be uncouth, though the temptation was strong as Beatryx eyed the wizard before her. How could one person so utterly encapsulate the very essence of mediocrity? She surveyed him dispassionately, wondering whether at the end of his working day, he returned to an equally dull wife. Perhaps together they had unremarkable children filling their too-small home, undoubtedly kept in passable condition by the adults themselves rather than with proper help. Beatryx had never gone a day in her life without the expectation that her environment would be cleaned for her, and that food would be made and served to her as she wished it. The humdrum life of those who worked for a living - if one could truly call such existence 'living' - seemed so utterly alien to Beatryx. Still, she supposed, there were jobs that needed to be done in society. Merlin forbid those of her ilk should ever be required to do them.

  Finally the man appeared to be satisfied that Beatryx did indeed have appropriate permission to proceed to her visit. She was led to a side room in order for a battery of security checks to be carried out. The experience was shaping up to be rather tedious so far - Beatryx curled her lip at the female responsible for patting her down. It was completely ridiculous that someone of her stature would be treated with the suspicion one would have for a common criminal. Honestly, did these idiots think a woman of her station, with as much at stake as all the old pureblood families reduced to single digits in the wake of the war, would risk launching some offence on the prison, or aiding a prisoner inside to do so? The Abercrombies were no Malfoys; they weren't in the business of so publicly staking the familial honour on throwing their lot with the unpopular side. She would visit this prisoner as would any other civilian, and leave with her reputation intact. Still, she supposed security in this place had to be lacking now that the soft touch currently presiding as Minister had removed dementors. Cruel and unusual punishment her foot - it was a prison! What society was so weak that it refused to punish its own prisoners?

  It was fortunate for her visitor today that Shacklebolt lacked the edge required to dispose of one's criminals effectively. Instead, from what Beatryx could gather from conversations with her cousin Farren, he appeared to be living in a reasonable degree of comfort. Of course, freedom would inevitably be much preferred to being kept in this forsaken place, but if one chose to live by the sword then dying by it was an inevitable consequence. In the prime of his power and influence, the man had crafted the society dreams were made of. His doctrine had been one of absolute purity; Beatryx had devoured every news clipping, press release and quote from the wizard she was about to meet. To her, he seemed to embody everything the failed Dark Lord had lacked. Measured, logical, calculated - he had never fashioned himself to be some creature of nightmares, only ever the man with the answer to the cultural rot in their dying society. He had never sought followers, and yet Beatryx was one. Whether he appreciated the unsolicited admiration or not was unknown to Beatryx, and something she was hoping to discover today.

  Relieved of her wand, Beatryx tuned out the new guard that appeared to lead her to a visitation room, his broad accent grating on her ears. Beatryx's own accent was heavily affected, the result of brutal elocution as a child. Her tutors had succeeded in eliminating her stammer, but the accent with which she spoke English was borderline obnoxious, having not been in vogue for some years. Regardless, the witch felt her jaw involuntarily clench when she was subjected to the assault on her hearing that a regional accent constituted. After a small eternity in the unwashed man's presence, she was directed to a somewhat dank but not unbearable stone walled room. Without a backward glance at the pathetic man beside her, Beatryx entered through a door that hummed with obvious protective charms. There was nobody in there yet, but a table with chairs either side had been provided. Rather than take a seat, Beatryx circled the room slowly.

  Abruptly, she was aware of her own nerves. She felt like a child about to meet an idol, and she smoothed her hands over her dress. It was a touch overly formal for the occasion if one considered it to be merely a visit to a prison inmate, and Bea had little doubt that it had been derisively noted by the staff she had encountered this afternoon. No matter; the opinions of halfbloods - and certainly those of mudbloods - meant nothing to her. She continued her pacing until she heard the door open again. The methodical clink of chains attached to moving limbs meant only one thing, and Beatryx turned a little too quickly to watch the wizard as he was seated by a guard and then freed from his chains. The guard left them to it, casting a curious glance at the still-silent Beatryx. A few more moments passed, before she slowly approached the unoccupied seat, keeping her icy blue gaze fixed on his.

  "Gaius Purcell..." Bea breathed, leaning forward with anticipation. "I've heard an awful lot about you."


@Gaius Purcell

“And everything you have heard is a gross exaggeration, I assure you,” he replied, his stony visage breaking out into a sly grin. He took her hand like the diplomat he had once been. “And you must be the mysterious Miss Beatryx Abercrombie, of whom I am deeply ashamed to know so little.” The Death Eater gestured to the chair next to the young woman. “Please make yourself at home, as much as one can in these meagre surroundings.” He slowly took the chair opposite the brunette, and, once settled, carefully examined her.

Gaius was, in his current surroundings, not usually accosted with such beautiful specimens. It had been quite some time since something young and feminine had been in his presence. It was true that the exquisite Farren Abercrombie was a near-frequent visitor, however her closeness in both demeanour and appearance to her mother was a cause of near-internal anguish to him; to meet her gaze for too long was like a clenched fish within his abdomen. Beatryx, fortunately, did not bear resemblance to Victoria. And so; like the old addict, having flirted with an imposed abstinence, who is unexpectedly confronted with their old vice and, not knowing if or when such an occasion would occur ever again, once more greedily imbibes; Gaius drank her in fully with his hazel orbs.

The young witch was immaculately, almost preternaturally presented: gift-wrapped, her iridescent dress a midnight blue and near serpentine as it clung to her form. Her hair, chestnut with a razor sharp parting, was flawless; one of those traits of the upper classes that mere mortals could never achieve. Her face was young, yet held an arrogant bearing; her azure gaze looked towards the end of time and beyond. She was stone; eternal and abiding amidst the ruins. Azkaban could crumble at that very moment, and she would still be there, seated as she was. Her youthful hubris only added to her permanence.

Her request to meet with him most certainly came from out of the blue. She claimed to be a cousin of Farren’s, a former Durmstrang student who had recently taken those first furtive steps into adulthood, coupled with a uprooting from her home in Germany into the old Abercrombie homestead at Cumbria. Gaius was not up to speed with the intricacies of pureblood high society; the various baffling lineages and near perpetual inbreeding made it difficult for all but the most obsessive of wizarding genealogists to keep track of. In his younger years when he had been close to Victoria Abercrombie, he had been given the vague enlightenment that several branches of the family had been somewhat disgraced over the centuries, causing fractures that carried through to today. An Abercrombie, one of the “non-corrupted” ones, had been sent to Germany in the aftermath of the Dark Lord’s first fall, in an attempt to create a bulwark against the feared collapse of pureblooded institutions in England. Gaius assumed that this young woman, seated opposite him with her learned posture and haunting eyes, was the fruit of this central European franchise operation. And a most pleasant fruit it had turned out to be, indeed.

He met her gaze once again; steady and firm. An abrupt politeness.

“Each week, I, or rather Azkaban Prison and the Ministry of Magic, receive quite a few letters addressed to me,” he began, his voice low but gentle. “Most are death threats. Several are fan mail. I believe I have even received several propositions of marriage in this manner. Some even request to meet with me. The vast majority of these epistles are, naturally, discarded. However, a little ministry official was kind enough to ensure that your message was to be treated very differently from all the rest, for how surprised was I to find it delivered to me by the very hands of a guard. Therefore, my first presumption is that you have friends in very high places.”

“And immediately, I noted with great interest that you share the Abercrombie surname, which, naturally, makes one, particularly myself, pay very close attention.” He narrowed his eyes and gave Beatryx a careful, reserved smile.

The wizard leaned forward carefully, elbows upon the table, and he made a steeple with his hands.

“The Abercrombie family are very well respected; across many facets of society. Times may have changed, but they appear to have not. Not ever. And I also hold them in very high regard. Abercrombie publications have always made up a significant proportion of my Wizarding library. Please be sure to pass my best regards to Farren.” He made a small half-gesture with his hand; a wave to the ether.

“And, who am I, a lowly convict, to refuse an audience with an Abercrombie who requests my presence?” Signalling that his introduction was now complete, the prisoner placed his hands upon the table top.

“So please tell me, how can I be of assistance?”

  Her mouth quirked upwards into a practiced response to his modesty. It would be rather gauche in polite company to push the envelope with it came to compliments; she had no doubt that Gaius was a man as practiced at playing down his strengths as any other well-raised pureblood. Well raised he may be, but Beatryx knew that he was not from stock equalling her own. The complex and interweaving lineage of the great families that shaped the upper class in England had been drummed into Beatryx's memory with military efficiency. Purcell - that was a name she recognised. The Purcells, from what she recalled, had remained pure. They were the sort that needed to work for a living, of course. His maternal line had been a conundrum to her, however. The witch's self-induced quest to know what she could about her target had lead to several afternoons perusing copies of pureblood engagement announcements from the wizarding press, accessible in the Abercrombie archives. The name on the announcement was unfamiliar to her - clearly foreign, but not one she'd recognised from any of her peers at Durmstrang. Perhaps she was from a line that was all but extinct, save for the man before her. Even Beatryx had to concede that she wasn't capable of exhaustive knowledge of every pureblood line that she encountered.

  At his behest, Beatryx settled into the seat he indicated. These were meagre surroundings indeed. She had grown up in a house paid for with Kirschbaum money and Abercrombie influence, and even that paled in comparison to the opulence of Dalemain. Her new home was quite easy to lose oneself in. At times, it seemed to Beatryx to be a maze to all but her grandfather and Farren. Dalemain was their birthright; they were all but born knowing it as much as they knew themselves. Bea felt that she would always be a guest, discovering more of the expansive architecture each day. Dalemain was a veritable behemoth that required an army of house elves to keep in good condition. This room would arguably fail to meet the standards for a broom cupboard there. The witch indulged herself in a private joke for a moment, pondering if the room would even fit a tenth of her cousin's shoe collection. Farren Abercrombie was to couture as centaurs were to the stars. Beatryx's own attire even today was modest in comparison. Gaius had to know that, of course - Farren had been visiting for some time now, a fact that Beatryx acknowledged with a kernel of jealousy that smouldered at the back of her head. Farren rarely shared her toys.

  Beatryx noticed that he was carrying out what she assumed to be a quick assessment of her. Perhaps he was sizing her up, trying to decide whether she made a worthy conversational partner. Naturally, the witch assumed that the answer would be yes. The Abercrombie name didn't just open doors; it created them where they simply did not exist for the lower echelons of society. Never in her life had Beatryx been denied something she wanted, and she was not prepared to contemplate such an event happening now. But what was it that she wanted from the wizard before her? She carried out an examination of her own, silently cataloguing details as she went along. His bone structure was wonderful; fine china with an overlay of skin that in his youth would have been tauter than it now was. Azkaban no longer aged its inmates as it once had however, and Mr Purcell had retained the air of somebody that felt themselves rather important. It was a positive quality. Something in the understated intensity of his gaze reminded her of the sensation that she felt when the Abercrombie patriarch looked at her. It was probing, measuring; her jaw tightened a fraction as she suppressed the urge to shift as she sat. It wouldn't do to fidget. When his eyes met her own again, a quote leapt unbidden to her mind.

  And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.

  His low voice broke her reverie. As he explained his acceptance of her invitation and what he had gleaned of her identity, Beatryx listened with rapt attention. There was a curious duality to participation in interaction with others when one had been coached in it from birth. Beatryx knew, objectively, that Gaius Purcell spoke with the polish of a wizard well-versed in the art of charisma. The witch wondered how many souls he had seduced with those mellifluous tones. How many moralistic types who had joined the ministry with goals so very different to the ones that he ignited in their souls. What she would have given to have been a fly on the wall when he won their hearts and minds and turned them to the cause that had all but set the Daily Prophet ablaze when reported at his trial. All this Beatryx knew him to be skilled in, for she had been taught to identify it. Yet still, she found herself compelled. She so rarely found anything worth relating to in other people, but in that moment she understood how he had enthralled those who did his bidding. Pyxis had spoke of the Halfblood Research Unit to Beatryx in detached, reluctant tones; it had rattled even her. But more than anything, it enthralled her.

  "You are no lowly convict, Mr Purcell. Of that I a certain." She leaned forward then once more, punctuating her speech with a conspiratorial smile. "You are a martyr. More so than those who died for the cause, for you have burned for it." As she spoke, she returned to her straight posture, the corseting she wore permanently beneath her clothing not permitting the poor posture for long without robbing her of her breath. It was an anachronism in her wardrobe that she couldn't bring herself to part with. It felt like a shield of sorts, she supposed. It was a symbol of propriety for the witch, rather than a form of lingerie. Beatryx was loathe to consider the latter; she was no harlot. Indeed, even as she was disrobed by her elf Schatzi at night, she carried herself with the uncomfortable awkwardness of a young woman still unfamiliar with her own body. Her dresses were always floor length, never décolleté. But where the witch was lacking in confidence relating to her physical form, she more than made up with it with confidence in every other area of her life. It was that confidence that pushed her onwards now, when a second of wavering insecurity suggested poisonously that perhaps Gaius Purcell would have no interest in what she sought from him. She clamped down on the thought ruthlessly. Weakness had no place in an Abercrombie.

  "I must admit to you, I have been a keen student of your work." The word disciple sprang to mind, but she thought it would perhaps be rather forward to display to extent of her fervency for his message now. "I have followed the progression of your accomplishments under the former government with great interest, and my dear cousin Pyxis has told me more still." At that, she skimmed her fingers in an innocent gesture over her left forearm. It was a gesture that would be innocuous to a third party, but one that was targeted at her quarry opposite her. His deeds were burned into his flesh as they were into Pyxis'. There was that flicker of jealousy again, this time at the thought that she had never been given the opportunity to work for the cause she believed in.

  "I... Have come to you to learn." She spoke unsmiling this time, her wide eyes steadfastly on his. "Your descant on society, its ills and the cure you put in place... The material published is finite. I have come to you to converse, and to learn."

  Beatryx did not know if he wanted a student or a follower. Regardless, here she was to be one.

To learn.

Gaius had always been the pupil. A pupil to Kevan Taite, a pupil to Alexander Alleline, a pupil to the Dark Lord himself. He had spent his entire life porous and discerning; he took everything on board and applied a filter to the raw data; masticating and tasting it; pulling it apart into its constituent pieces and reassembling until he was sure he had absorbed everything that could be of use. His one virtue had always been the ability to learn.

And time had come, as it always should do, and moved everyone along; it had wiped out a generation, and then another as if a grisly joke; as if once was not extreme enough; and all the leaders of men and all the bellwethers had been razed from the surface of the earth, and suddenly he was nearly a of fountain of arcane knowledge; he was something to be carefully placed in a museum for children to come and examine briefly and then answer questions on at the end of the tour - simply because the rest were either in unmarked graves, or hidden from the world like the true cowards they had turned out to be.

But she was different. She could not help it. Sui generis. She was different from the filthy scraps of paper that he would frequently stowed away inside the pages of his books, from prisoners who had the ability to beguile the guards; from admirers and devotees from beyond those jagged and cold walls who found a way to make those little pathetic calls from the void that were always written in a childish scrawl, all poor grammar; the inscriptions of the insane and the psychotic.

Tel me pleas sir how yuz wuld like me to killd the mudbloods. I also will killd mudbloods for yu. I wait yur comand.

For, that was often their most devoted followers. Those strange neglected few, since time eternal always there, always disposed of by the world and allowed to fester; to grow contempt and hatred unchecked; always the easiest to charm; to entice; to cheat and to con their livelihoods and very futures away from them: it was always rather simple; to turn their failing and their animosity on itself; to come out the other side and blame the other; the mudbloods; those poor confused wizards who through pure act of fate and the blackest humour of the Gods were blessed with that same uncanny ability as those with the purest of blood; that ancient and eternal magic; and thusly how easy it frequently was to sequence a hatred; to encourage a wish for destruction of this other in their midst. And if you wanted to rid those strange witches and wizards from the face of the Earth, who better than the unstable and the chronically violent to drag the poor wretches from their beds and kill them in the streets. A generation of destroyers. Death squads and lights in the sky at night. And they functioned all too well.

And Gaius, invariably, detested them. Blunt tools; more animal than men; more men than wizards. They had nothing in common with him; with those blessed few, with the Dark Lord. But any movement that wished to succeeded needed something more than long drawn-out masturbatory discussions into the small hours of the night over politics and of blood. It needed manpower, and it needed a brutality that could be wrought from nothing; a violation of entropy; violence from thin air. And Gaius and his ilk; they stood by and attempted to control those dogs; those creatures. For, the bloodshed was worth something, was it not? This was a cleansing; a return to sanctity; it was for her, was it not? This perfect young woman, staring through him, the blood coursing through her veins hallowed by its very being.

Those savages and their “performances”, the dirty blood in the streets and the families torn asunder, it was all for her. And here she was, to learn. What exactly? How they had died for her? How he had attempted to change the world about its Axis mundi for her sort? Would she want to know?

Gaius looked away; small windows at the top of the walls allowed the briny scent of the North Sea to permeate the dank rooms, and for a moment he allowed himself to picture himself beyond the walls; swimming in the cold water; away from it all. He was committing the cardinal sin of the imprisoned - to imagine one’s freedom. After a moment, reality returned to him and his low voice gently pushed the enveloping silence away.

“Beatryx, you do realise . . . ,” and he looked back towards her, his eyes falling upon her left forearm, to where she had gestured, and that terrible sinking feeling within the pit of his stomach grew as he wondered if one of his boy scouts had scarred her as a child. And for a moment he nearly would have grabbed her and found out for himself, as vulgar as that would be. For at least then he would know.

“ . . . you do realise . . .” he repeated, eyes still upon her narrow limb as it lay upon the table. Sacred bone and flesh and sinew.

“ . . . that we lost ?”

  "Lost?" Beatryx narrowed her gaze, a flicker of irritation registering on her features before they smoothed once more into her impassive default expression. Of course one would consider the whole effort lost if the benchmark of success was whether Lord Voldemort had succeeded in his life aims. For a short, breathtakingly glorious time Gaius and his comrades had held true power in the grasp. She supposed that losing such a position would feel like losing the entire endeavour. But Britain hadn't been ready for the change. There was too much hope, too much resistance; figures such as Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter to flock to and worship as false prophets who promised rainbows and happiness. The Dark Lord had been heavy handed and, eventually, insane - and had paid for it in the end. Too many confused being feared with power. It was a feature not unique to wizardkind; in her lessons on muggle history - for yes, even though they were deemed savages, knowledge of the creatures that posed such a threat to their very existence would be foolish to deem unimportant - she had learned of many a muggle dictator who had taken the same crazed path that Lord Voldemort had. One in Russia stood out in particular, with followers too scared to enter his room dooming the man to death when he needed medical attention.

  Yes, Lord Voldemort had lost.

  But how could Gaius be so short-sighted? Perhaps that was the curse of this place. A man locked away without a prospect of life on the outside ever again could be forgiven for feeling more than a little pessimistic. Likewise, he had tasted the chance to craft a better world, and had it snatched away all too early. Yes, it was unduly rash for her to be disappointed in the wizard's outlook. As Gaius had just moments ago, Beatryx gazed contemplatively at their surroundings. Could he still feel the history in this place? Her eyelids lowering meditatively, she considered the blood soaked origins of Azkaban. Records of the atrocities that Ekrizdis had carried out in his personal incarnation of hell on earth were hard to come by; certainly no public comments had ever been given in detail. Of course, a little thing like redacted records had never stopped a family with the money and influence of the Abercrombies. Beatryx had been seven years old when she'd first got her hands on a copy of the original reports from the investigators in her father's study. She'd had nightmares for months, and the nanny responsible for letting her find the records had been dismissed. Now over ten years later she was living at Dalemain, and had a chance to read the manuscript in full. No nightmares this time, but the ancient wizard's deeds made the recently vanquished Dark Lord look like a kitten. She snapped her gaze back to Gaius.

  "Ekrizdis spilled more muggle blood than the Dark Lord even dreamed of, and embedded enough misery in this forsaken place to keep dementors here for centuries." She paused, fingers delicately tracing around the outline of a royal blue ring that she wore on her left hand. "That was the fifteenth century, and here we are now in the twenty-first. Humans are mortal. Ideas are not."

  Oh, there were definitely times where Beatryx felt impatient. Where she raged internally against the folly of those who had frittered away the power they had in hubris and madness. Things could have been different. She could have lived to raise children in a world where blood was respected, and the mudblood threat was dealt with once and for all. It needn't have stopped at blood, either - after the immediate threat there had been dealt with, magical society could have focussed on returning to its glory days. Beatryx was, as many in the upper class, a staunch conservative. Small government, minor if any regulation on the use of dark magic, a greatly widened syllabus on the magical curriculum with privately funded academies encouraged as competition to force that doddering old institution Hogwarts into ending the practice of wrapping its students in happy-clappy liberal cotton wool... The witch had been on the precipice of witnessing all of that greatness in her own lifetime. Her heart felt bitterly robbed when she considered that her own children would be raised as she was; taught the right and proper ways to think but taught in equal measure to keep those ideas to herself amongst everyone but allies. But Bea wasn't a dreamer - she was a pragmatist. Yes, Gaius Purcell had gambled and lost. But one man's loss need not be a loss for wizardkind.

  "We trace the Abarcrumbach line back over two thousand years, you know. Two millennia later, and the Abercrombie line remains pure. How many losses do you think we have sustained in that time? The survival of lines such as mine would never have been possible if we were taught to measure success in as little a space of time as one life... Our ideals are not lost until our blood is." As she spoke, Beatryx paused the circling motions on her ring, suddenly grasping either side of the stone between her thumb and forefinger and twisting sharply. It opened, revealing a hollowed out space in which there was a small quantity of deep purple crystallised powder. She dabbed the ring finger of her right hand delicately in the powder to pick some up, before closing the ring once more whilst she held the aforementioned finger out of the way. Watching the wizard opposite her carefully, Bea turned her left arm over slowly and deliberately, exposing the smooth, blank expanse of her forearm. The skin was pale enough to show the network of veins beneath it. Making sure that he was paying attention, Beatryx delicately smoothed the purple granules over the exposed skin, and a cool tingling sensation spread as the magic in the powder was activated. A symbol that Beatryx knew Gaius would recognise appeared on her skin.

  The powder was an evaporated form of a potion enchanted with an anti-concealment charm. In this form, the powder enabled Beatryx to wandlessly reveal the truth of the mark on her arm. Additionally, as the charm was not being directly cast, the effects were temporary. The small amount that Beatryx had used meant that the mark was already fading from view. She was rather pleased with herself for figuring out how to get around the inconvenience of the Azkaban guards inevitably taking her wand. The ring itself was an heirloom; not inherently a dark one that would set off any wards or sensors, but goblin-made and resistant to any probing revelios that might be cast her way. It had done its job flawlessly. The concealment on Beatryx's arm was considerably more powerful, and had been placed with the help of Pyxis. It was only fair after all, given he was the reason it was on her arm in the first place.

  "I'm told by Pyxis that this particular project has largely failed to come to fruition. Consider it a sign that I am committed to a cause greater than myself instead. Teach me what you have to share, Gaius, and I in turn will teach it to my children and their progeny."

“Ekrizdis was, unfortunately, insane, and I suspect was driven more by bloodlust than by anything else.” To Gaius’ eternal distaste, many of the Pureblood movement’s supposed heroes and cornerstone figures were nothing more than deranged psychotics; characters with crimes that the depth of history had dulled and strangely had turned them into cult figures of idolatry. He disliked when the youth spoke of those characters as somewhat noteworthy; as if the greatness of a wizard could be measured by simple bodycount alone. As one with not a short inventory of death in his own wake, he knew from hard-earned experience how futile was such a measure of a man.

The brunette continued, and Gaius granted her his ear. She spoke of her lineage; of its permanence. Of the effort required to sustain it; that eternal battle against entropy and decay. He was emboldened at her clarity; it was clear for all to see that the blood was everything to her. And he, naturally, agreed - for there was nothing more precious to their sort. If they could learn this obsession at her age, perhaps they could keep it with them; could spread it to their children, and beyond. Gaius had long since feared desanctification; that with generation and generation coming head-to-head with that fatal attractiveness of modernity, one day the blood would no longer be cherished; no longer hallowed; discarded as a weight of tradition no longer required. It was imperative that the youth knew of the solemnity of their gift. And Gaius could see how it burned deep behind Beatryx’s cold eyes.

His own hazel orbs dropped to her moving hand, watching carefully as she opened her ring and elegantly extracted a fine powder upon her fingertip, which she proceeded to gently apply to the delicate pale skin of her exposed forearm. A delicately coiled serpentine symbol slowly appeared through the white, twisted and curled about itself; an elegant reimagining of their old brand. As quickly as it had came, it slipped away, back to the bone white of her flawless skin.

Again she spoke. He stopped her by placing his open hand firmly upon her forearm; forceful and uninvited. His eyes buried into hers.

“Do you realise what this means, Beatryx? Has Pyxis informed you?” His gaze did not leave her. She had seen Gaius the courteous host. Now this was Gaius the leader of men. “This . . . this mark, it could have very significant consequences for you, and those you love.” He suddenly released her and stood to his feet, his chair sliding back quickly along the stone floor as he swiftly strode away from the table. The Death Eater rubbed his stubbled face with his open hand, and came to a halt in the corner of the room with his back to the young woman, gazing into the darkness as though beyond, somewhere out in the void, he could find a simple answer.

This was the complexity. This was in fact his complexity, signed off by him and him alone. It had worked too well; gone too far, even. Even pureblood royalty had been picked and stamped like good meat; recruited for deliverance and death. And, as if to spite him, here was one proudly presenting herself in his very place of confinement, proud of what she had achieved, proud of her selection. His war had not ended, and now he realised that it would never end. Those forces wrought on that Spring morning in Nineteen-ninety eight had come to this point. He had wanted it; he had encouraged it. He had even triggered it this time. And then, why did it trouble him so? Had he seen too much of it? Too much willingness for death? Too much spilt blood and youth torn asunder? Bodies broken and distorted and screaming their death grins to the dark skies above them? Beatryx, beautiful and proud, asking for guidance to her very own reckoning.

He spoke slowly with a throat filled with gravel. “I have no idea who did that to you; I can only hazard a guess that it was our dear friend Pyxis, in one of his more insouciant moments. Had I a say in it, that cursed thing would never have touched your skin. But now, unfortunately, it is too late.”

He turned to her and stalked back to the table in one smooth quick movement, placing both hands upon its rugged surface, his weight making it judder and the wood strain and the little stubby candle upon it trembled, and for a moment the shadows that mapped the exquisite lines of her face were liquid.

“You are now a soldier, Beatryx. Selected by our best . . . ” the cynicism was rising through his voice, “ . . . to continue that grand and eternal task of ours. To follow orders, or to die. Or both, as the case may very well be.” He grabbed her by that same unspoilt arm and hauled her to her feet, knocking her wooden chair over in the process, and he stepped into her, holding her by the wrist now, with her forearm by her face. His other hand gripped her bony shoulder. Words proceeded to come from his mouth, but no one could mistake them for simple conversation, for the words he spoke  were not meant to be deliberated with.

“You cannot disobey, nor can you ever shy away from the responsibility that you have now been given. You can never turn your back upon this. This is not a country club, Beatryx. This is not an event where the Abercrombie’s meet twice a month and play Bridge and drink port all night.” He gripped her tighter and his face was nearly against hers, his eyes narrowing and his neck arcing to her with a coiled, twisted energy; a bottled rage that was slowly boiling over.

This was the start.

The look in her eyes was enough, and he released her sharply, turning away from her. His breath was heavy and deep, and a wave on unexpected tiredness washed over him, as if unused to this emotional exertion. He was angry, and ashamed that he had taken it out upon her; she was young, she had meant no harm in her enthusiasm. And yet, it was about to start all over again. Perhaps, he thought, that was all fate would ever have in store for him. Wave after wave of death.

“There are others like you. Soon you will meet them.”

  His hand on her arm silenced her. Beatryx was a respectable, well-bred young lady of means. There wasn't a time in her life that Beatryx could ever recall a man she wasn't related to laying so much as a finger on her. The skin contact made her freeze, and her eyes widened for a fraction of a moment before she clamped down on her surprise and erased it from her features. Gaius seemed to be coming alive before her, his clipped mannerisms losing a little of their formal edge as emotion bled into his tone. The witch wasn't sure what she had expected, but a somewhat more positive reaction that this had, she thought, been more likely. But then, she supposed, the last followers of a cause reporting to Mr Purcell were largely imprisoned or perished, now. Here she was, a painted lamb for the slaughter, giddily showing a mark burned into her skin that signalled her out for more danger. Mentally, she cursed herself. Externally, she kept the same compure as always, her eyes following the path that the man now took across the room.

  The words he spoke would have felt borderline insulting, if Beatryx hadn't spent a lifetime being talked down to. Life was a game of hierarchies, and she would swallow whatever barbed words Gaius Purcell had for her now. Where she was of superior birth, he was of superior knowledge and experience. Where her upbringing differed from Farren's was that Beatryx had never been raised with the knowledge that one day, she would answer to nobody. Her father's words to her during the last face to face conversation that they had before she left for Britain meant more than ever, now. There are very few people on this earth who will earn your respect with something other than their birth, Beatryx. The witch had scoffed, believing her respect to be inseparable from knowing the person it was owed to as being of adequate breeding. Nyx had smiled at her, the expression of a man who recalled what it was like to be young and so very self assured on his face. When you encounter a person who does so... His features had hardened, then. Know when to bend the knee.

  Was that what was happening here? She was jolted from that introspection by Gaius' palms slamming onto the table before her, and his words turned harsh. A soldier, following orders or facing death. How much Abercrombie blood had been spilled over the last man who demanded such fealty? Yet here Beatryx was, ink seared into her flesh and effectively handing the man before her the athame handle first. Her cousins were tempered by steady heads on their shoulders, ambitious but cautious with memories of war and loss seared into their brains. Beatryx's greatest asset and weakness had always been that she had inherited whatever rogue personality trait had made previous members of the family such fanatics. How queer, she thought, to be conscious of the trap she was walking into and enjoying it all the same. Power, she had. Money, in spades. But purpose - the kind that sang in one's veins, burned in the throat, that tilted the world on its axis to orbit around a goal until nothing but its achievement made sense - that, Beatryx knew she craved like an addict craved their fix.

  She gasped as Gaius pulled her upright, his contact with her this time beyond surprising and now downright inappropriate. Her knee-jerk reaction was to tell him that he had forgotten himself, but she caught herself in time to remember that the power to do so had just flowed from her to him. His breath fanned across her face, eyes alight with a fervour that Beatryx wanted to feel herself. His grip was painful, but she did not complain. If this was a test, she would pass it. So she remained silent, eyes darting over his face and chest rising and falling with the rapid pace of her shallow breaths. Beatryx itched for her wand, an outlet for the magic thrumming with every pulse of her elevated heartbeat. Before she could get ahold of herself, a snarl crossed her features briefly at the implication that she would ever treat this endeavour with anything but the solemnity that it demanded.

  Truthfully, she was at this point in equal measures frightened and exhilarated. Her upbringing had involved discipline by magic, as any respectable family used. Certainly, there was not one moment in Beatryx's entire life in which she had been so... manhandled. She ought to be offended. To hiss in his face that by her blood she was as good as royalty, and that any wizard who caused so much as a single hair to be out of place on her head would be gutted like an animal by the husband she would one day have. Perhaps such a threat was a touch hyperbolic and also unwise given the venue of this discussion, but the sentiment remained. Instead, Beatryx felt like something was falling into place. Her knees felt weak, but Beatryx would rather swallow glass than bend the physical, rather than the metaphorical knee to the man holding her upright in this obscene show of force. She would obey, but she would do so as more than a snivelling lackey. Witches and wizards who kissed the feet of those they served did so to attempt to make up for what they lacked in caliber.

  Gaius released her suddenly, and Beatryx stumbled backwards in surprise. For a moment, she observed him, chest heaving as she slowed her breaths. The mad urge to laugh occurred to her, though she managed to dilute its physical manifestation to a rather out of place smile. She wondered if he would mistake that for her finding something in his words amusing. As the wizard turned from her, Beatryx took the opportunity to regain her composure. She straightened her spine, tugging at the bodice of the restrictive corset that she seemed to demand her elves tied ever more tightly each day. For once, it had been a hindrance. Swallowing, she found her voice for the first time in what felt like an eternity. She ran her tongue briefly across her teeth and stabbed at her cheeks with it, loosening her mouth as she had been taught in elocution. Now was not the time for her childhood speech impediment to arise. Propriety prevented her from making physical contact with the man now turned away from her, so she merely took several steps to close the distance between them, and spoke from directly behind him.

  "My word and my blood are my bond, Gaius Purcell." Beatryx said, the ice from her heart seeping into her tone. "I will live and die by the ideals that I hold. Pyxis would not have awoken me without knowing that I could be a zealot." For a zealot was what it took to be so assured that something could be achieved with the odds stacked so heavily against their movement, no? If Gaius turned now, he would have seen the almost reverent glaze that her eyes had. That purpose that she so desired was no longer tantalisingly out of reach. Gaius Purcell, for all the roughness of his manner in the past few minutes, had won her soul over to the cause at the same time as insulting her. She wondered for a moment if this was what the ill-fated late Victoria Abercrombie had felt when she met the Dark Lord. Had her world made so much more sense, as Beatryx felt hers did now? But this was no time to wax lyrical over the past. There was a future, now.

  "Tell me about them," she paused for a moment, unsure of whether she ought to use a title now that she had acknowledged this new pecking order. "Sir."