Liz has always refused to become like her family. Even though the blood of the Black family flows in her veins. Adopted by Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange after the death of her father Regulus - in hopes of "setting her on the right path" , she st...
[Trigger warning! Self-harm, abuse, lots and lots of scars.]
Liz couldn't close an eye that night. She didn't really expect to sleep after that nightmare, but at least to get some rest.
But there was no rest. Hour after hour she had lain there staring at the ceiling until she finally dared to tentatively turn her head to the side.
Mattheo lay stretched out on his side of the bed. One arm hung out over the edge of the bed, the other was just inches from Liz.
For a while, she just watched him. The way his nostrils arched slightly, the way his eyes twitched as he had a REM episode.
He'd asked her if she hated him, and she'd replied that she didn't know him enough to like him.
Hesitantly, Liz reached out to him. He inherited his dark curls from his father. She brushed a strand from his face. But if his story was true - and Liz didn't doubt it, she had witnessed terrible cruelty in her family herself - then he couldn't be on his father's side. Could he?
Her fingers traced the scar that stretched from his forehead across his eyebrow and, after a break above his eye, continued across his cheekbone. A deep cut. But far from the worst scar.
Her eyes traveled down to his chest, which rose and fell evenly. The blanket covered most of it, but she'd seen the scars before. Dozens of lines stretched across his back, like lightning bolts across a stormy sky.
And then the scars across his chest. She had tried not to gawk like a moron earlier when he had taken off his T-shirt, but the dark scar tissue had been too noticeable. What magic did that kind of thing?
Liz didn't realize how much time had passed until she watched the sun paint Mattheo's outline gold. Young Riddle had fought for her life more than once. He had put up with her wild whims, and now he was likely to not only mess with her family, but to take on a whole slew of Death Eaters at once.
Watching him sleep so peacefully, it was hard to imagine. He was just a boy, after all.
As if on cue, Mattheo grumbled sleepily and rolled onto his side. Again Liz's eyes wandered over the scars that furrowed his shoulders. Dozens of even welts. Before her brain understood what she was doing, she had run her fingers along the white skin. It wasn't until her fingers reached his spine that she realized what she was doing - and that Mattheo was watching her out of the corner of his eye.
"Pretty nasty, huh?" he murmured in a rough, sleepy voice.
"You don't seem very ashamed of it. Otherwise you would have had it magicked away long ago," Liz remarked, trying to regain her sanity, because she clearly must have lost it to touch Mattheo so familiarly.
"And what about you? Are you ashamed?"
Liz turned her forearm so that the golden morning sun cast shadows across the uneven skin. If she was honest, it wasn't so much shame as a strange indifference. No one saw her scars because she always wore long sleeves, even in the worst of summer. And she herself knew her scars, after all. Fuck, she had caused enough of them herself.
"What do you tell others when they ask you where they came from?" After Mattheo's relaxed response, Liz gave in to the urge again. The scars started at his shoulders, closer to his arm than his neck, and Liz now followed them down the other shoulder.
Mattheo chuckled and his curls bobbed gently. "Sex."
"Ugh!", Liz groaned, slapping him on the smooth skin just below his hairline. This only made him laugh harder. As he sat up, still laughing, the blanket slid down, revealing the full extent to Liz. Sharply, she sucked in the air. She had only just seen a hand's width of his shoulders, but further down the scars became more misshapen. Whatever had happened had left him half mangled.
"Who did this to you?"
But Mattheo was already spinning around. "Liz. Don't." He contorted his face as if he had a disgusting taste in his mouth. "I don't want pity."
But that hadn't been her intention at all.
"I don't have any pity. But," hesitantly she pressed her lips together, then pulled the T-shirt over her head.
Mattheo had to be given credit for the fact that his gaze only wandered to her bra for a moment before tracing the numerous, painful memories on Liz's torso.
"I have no pity." She looked down at herself. "But you're the first to understand. Really understands."
Mattheo's eyes still roamed over the scars Liz's childhood had left on her. From the broken collarbone to the acid-etched thigh.
"The woman who saved me, you remember? She raised me for a few years." Mattheo paused and looked toward the window. "I think she was afraid I'd turn out like him. Every little stupid thing had its consequences right away. Until she couldn't take it anymore. I guess I was too much responsibility for her after all."
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"That was her?" Liz had crossed a line, and that made it all the harder for her not to reach for Mattheo's back again. Examining the horrible scars that still didn't fade after so many years.
"She was a Death Eater, remember? No one in the inner circle is especially," he grimaced, "empathetic."
"And these?" Liz was about to point to the next scar - the one on his face. But Mattheo caught her hand while it was still in the air and pushed it down.
"Ah, ah, ah!" he went on almost playfully. "An eye for an eye. I've told a pitiful tale of woe, now it's your turn. This one. What happened there?" He pointed to the wide scar that spread like an explosion across her chest up to her collarbone.
It was by far the worst injury Bellatrix had ever inflicted on her. But also Liz's favorite. Thievishly, she grinned to herself as she finally confessed, "I called Bellatrix a Mudblood."
In disbelief, Mattheo laughed. "You what? Are you tired of living?"
Liz shrugged. To this day, it sometimes cracked when she did that. "I barely remember why we started fighting in the first place. It was tiny little things back then that made her fly off the handle. One thing led to another and I called her a filthy mudblood not worthy of being a Death Eater."
Mattheo's eyes grew wide. He had met Bellatrix. This woman was not to be trifled with.
"Her husband just barely managed to keep her from murdering me. However, she nearly cut off my arm in return."
"And you're sure we shouldn't kill her after all?"
Liz shook her head. "That would only catapult me further up the hit list, and I don't know how much longer you can keep it a secret that your father isn't so thrilled with your existence."
Sighing, Mattheo pushed himself out of bed. "I guess that's my cue then. It's going to be a long day today." He glanced at Liz before a suggestive smile stole onto his lips. " Though - I feel like getting clothes for you is something I can cross off the to-do list."
______________ Hey Babes! (Cringe sorry xD) I'm back! Did you guys miss Mattheo too? Finally we're going into the third and probably first finale season of Darkest Desire x.x at least the last season I had planned so far.... But am I really ready to let Mattheo and Liz go already??? I'm not sure xD
