Give in, girl, give in

No, no, no.

It was horrifying, standing in the middle of Satan’s with such a look on her face. Bodies surged around her, and the music pounded horrifically in her ears. She felt spots forming on the edges of her vision and felt like the floor was oscillating towards and away from her. She could see Ben being dragged off by his friends, men tucking masks away and keeping their arms covered. It didn’t matter how subtle they were trying to be. The look of deep apology wasn’t enough to take away the image of the Dark Mark, as permanent in her mind’s eye as it was on her brother’s forearm.

She knew it was foolish to think this way but it kept ringing through her head. How could he do this to me? How could he do this to me? Death Eaters and Death Eater families had ruined her life. The guys from school. Robin. The guys from New York. Nash. Nash. They were a selfish breed, stealing only what they needed to promote themselves, regardless of whether or not it ruined someone in the process. If she, perhaps, had channeled this selfish spirit more than once, perhaps she would not have burned as many times as she had been.

How could he do this to me?

What? Support an organization she had a private issue with? She had not told anyone of how deeply she resented the masked population, even leaving Claire in the dark about her secret efforts to court and spurn as many of the pureblooded men she could, leaving them with heartbreak and devoid of privacy once she had harvested their secrets. Ben had probably suspected, as he had always picked up on even the most subtle of Elsie’s private thoughts, but he could not have known. And from the conversation she had just overheard, about battles and kidnappings and runaways, it seemed that this was no new development.

Where did that leave her?

Every man in her life she allowed herself to put any sort of trust or worry into turned out to be apart of that organization, as though one of their goals was to run her into the ground. It couldn’t really be that personal, but it was all too circumstantial to be ignored.

Somehow, her fate was tangled with that of the Death Eaters.

But what could she do about it now? Ben was gone, and the world continued on around her. Elsie wasn’t sure what was happening or what her next step… But she had the distinct feeling, as she wavered on the dance floor, that she might faint.

He’d not been looking. Finding her amidst the gyrating bodies was pure accident, though she stuck out like a beacon desperate to be saved, the lone creature not moving amidst the neon and the smoke. He’d lifted his head to avoid the cumbersome kiss of the woman leant against him. She would have done for company that evening, to kick from his bed after he was through. It wasn’t for lust’s sake, really, just habit now. The base thudded, the people continued to move and the drink continued to flow. Equally, the ash growing at the end of his cigarette continued to lick down its end. Yet, he’d stopped because so had she.

Getting to his feet, Augustus took the cigarette from his lips and stubbed it out in the ash tray on the table. He exhaled the smoke and cleaned his mouth out with a slug of firewhisky and then trundled down the steps out onto the dance floor. The protests of his companions barely registered above the sound of the music and the beating of blood in his ears, his own intent. His fingers itched by his sides, remembering how she had felt in his grasp. His nostrils filled with the remembered scent of her hair rather than the stench of people and drink. He could feel her softness on his palms even when his hand touched at people’s backs, pressing against their rough-spun cotton shirts and dresses to get them to move.

His hand finally enclosed around her wrist and he turned her into his arms, his other arm winding around her waist. Augustus lowered his head to look at her, a frown colouring his features when he saw the look on her face up close. He lost all of the wind from his sails then and floundered for something witty to say. He didn’t have anything witty to say. He didn’t have any wit left in him, he didn’t think. Not now. Augustus closed his mouth and lifted the hand from her wrist, tentatively drawing his knuckles across her cheek.

He leaned down and brought his lips to her ear. “What has happened?” There was no point asking what he wanted to ask. He could see it on her face. Something was wrong, she definitely was not alright.

Elsie felt an arm slip around her but she felt numb to the touch, as her outings to such places as Satan's were often not complete without a stranger or two wrapping their arms around her and whispering sweet nothings into her ear in the hopes that it might work. She felt her back go slightly rigid, ready to mutter something to the man that would get him to lose interest and abandon her. Maybe mindless sex was what she had needed. She had relied on it when she felt lonely or downtrodden before and, while she had never seen positive results, that did not really reflect on its success or not. Life rarely had beams of positivism for Elsie Norton.

She turned in to look at the man, completely out of control of her body as he pulled her in to him. She wanted to say something shocking and dark, but when she looked up, she found that it was not a stranger who had accosted her. It was a very familiar man, a man she would not have made so familiar if she had known the very secret she had just learned about her closest kin. It was a man who was so intrinsically apart of the problem.

Then why did his grip feel so comforting?

He reached his hand up to her cheek and she blinked under his touch. She felt like her instincts should have prompted her to withdraw when he leaned down, but she remained where she was, letting him get close. He whispered the question and her eyes squeezed shut. How horrible. Claire had missed a lot of her pain and, regardless of how well Elsie held it all in, she should have noticed something by now. And rather than ask her how she was, Ben had just left her in her shock and hurt. Why was Augustus concerned? He was supposed to be the problem. Why did she feel like he might have the solution?

What has happened?

"I need to get out of here," she whispered, eyes still blank, voice hollow.

(OOC: Wheeeeeee, godmoddy. Eek. Sorries. <3 If tis bad I can edit. )

If there was one thing that Augustus Rookwood had in swathes then it was places to go – places to hide if you found yourself in a pickle. He had melted away into nothingness many times over the years only to spontaneously reappear with a new woman, more money and a certain level of crassness that was simultaneously charming and irritating to the pureblood community. It was a miracle his late wife had put up with it, really, but it had been bred into her, hadn’t it? The stiff upper lip wasn’t solely the preserve of the British – the Irish had it too.

The Rookwood man had a thousand places he could have taken Elsie in that moment. In truth, he possibly should have just conveyed them outside into the cool night air and asked her properly in the lamplight what it was that was bothering her but Augustus was nothing if not a natural showman. Plus, there was something about Knockturn Alley that unsettled him these days. It felt odd to consider it, too, when once he had felt so at home. Now it rankled a little bit with him and he supposed in that respect he was showing his age. He hated the darkness.

Hence, the Rookwood headed for the light.

Later, he’d consider that Italy had been a bit of a strange sort of choice for them when all she wanted to do, quite possibly, was go home. Yet it had been a while since he had flexed his muscles when it came to long-distance apparition and he relished in the feeling of the air whipping around them as he focused on arriving them exactly where they landed: on the doorstep of the villa he so loved that was built delicately into the cliff face. Its yellow façade was heartening and Augustus felt a settled sort of peace envelope him.

After all that had happened in the last few weeks, he certainly knew he needed this break. The Order, he knew, would forever be etched in his mind. That house had been turning around in his brain for days but he couldn’t figure out quite what the supressed nodules of memory were trying to tell him. Something was important there that he had missed – but what it was, for the life of him, he had yet to figure out.

“M’lady,” he murmured, opening the front door wide so that she could enter. The lights came on almost immediately, setting a faint glow on the sparsely but richly decorated foyer that was permeated with the smell of the sea and the fresh twinge of the citrus trees that grew further up the hill. He had forgotten how much he loved it in this place. He spent far too much time in Venice when, really, this was where he should have been – year round, if the sun permitted.

“It might be a touch dramatic,” he considered as he strode into the sitting room that was again, sparsely but elegantly furnished. The patio doors opened automatically to let in a cool sea breeze to relieve the stuffiness of the rooms. “But there’s certainly enough room between you and whatever is amiss at home. Though, if it is … too much,” it was now catching up with him that perhaps he had been a little bit too presumptuous. “I can take you anywhere you like.”

He probably should have asked. But then, would it have been very Rookwoodian of him if he had? He supposed not. They always took, never asked.

((Totally fine, m'dear))  

Elsie did not care where she was going, finding that once she had given up on who took care of her, she really didn't care where she went. However, the strong arms wrapping around her torso were not a horrible choice in companion. He stood for the movement that had, for so long, been in almost direct opposition of her happiness. But Ben was a Death Eater. Ben, her first friend, and the only one who had ever truly been on his side before she had adopted Claire Bishop as her soul sister. He had never let her down, never disappointed her. He had always been good to her, and she it was hard to imagine how his being a Death Eater might spell an end to that relationship.

But... it had to. They had always stood for all of the dark times in her life.

But... Augustus was rescuing her. He didn't really know it, but he knew that he was doing some sort of kindness for her, and he was doing it willingly, without complaint. He had never really done anything to harm her, either. Their first night together had been mutual and lovely, only turning sour when she had reacted poorly to the blemish taking up much of his forearm. And their next meeting had been... adventurous. She couldn't even be angry at him, for it been exactly what she had done to him.

She and Augustus Rookwood were even, for all intents and purposes. So why was he being kind to her? Death Eaters weren't supposed to be kind.

The appeared on the doorstep of one of his expensive vacation getaway homes... of course. She couldn't be upset. The change of scenery would do her good. She stepped across the threshold into the beautifully furnished room - the sort of room she had supposed would be the backdrop for her future. Despite her unwillingness to get along with her parents and marry, as they so desperately wanted her to do, some part of her had suspected she would find someone with finer tastes anyway. Hopefully, someone her parents didn't approve of, but still maintained the lifestyle she had grown so accustomed to.

So, yes, she felt right at home among the furniture that equaled most people's annual salaries.

She supposed she should say something to Augustus. Thank him for the help, assure him that this was fine, apologize for intruding. But she really only wanted to say one thing, and she was struggling to allow pleasantries to take precedence. So... out it came.

"Why are you a Death Eater?"

“Getting right to it, are you?”

Augustus liked to pride himself on being an extraordinarily clever wizard. He wasn’t, of course. That much was just bluster. However, he was indeed at the sharp end of the tool while many of his other relatives, particularly his son much to his infinite ire, could not claim the same. That hadn’t prevented him from making foolhardy decisions, though. Knowing better would never stop him from acting in a way that wouldn’t help him. The fact that he was a Death Eater was proof enough of that. But even an idiot could deduce that something Death Eater related had happened to Elsie that evening.

In a funny sort of way, he felt as though he did owe her an explanation. Unwittingly, he found himself wanting to impart that information. He knew, though, that spilling out a dark secret like that to a witch who he had no ties to except for, well, sex … it was dangerous, wasn’t it? He supposed he could have threatened her to keep quiet about it on pain of death but it would have been a bit counter-intuitive seeing as he did want to admit that he wasn’t trying to be all bad. He’d never gone looking for that darkness. He’d been looking for prestige. The darkness had found him, had crept up on him like a shadow.

“I’m illegitimate,” he announced before he could stop himself. He looked down and found a use for his hands by unbuttoning his blazer. He tore it off and threw it onto the back of one of the arm chairs before taking off his cufflinks and slipping them into his pocket, allowing him to start rolling up the sleeves of the crisp white shirt he’d donned earlier that evening. “I am illegitimate,” he said again, though this time mostly to himself, testing the way the words felt on his tongue. They didn’t sour as he’d always imagined though his heart still twinged within him, wishing it wasn’t true.

“It is probably one of the biggest secrets the Rookwoods in the current day. My mother was my father’s mistress and still is, in fact. His wife, as is her right, will always sit with him at dinner but to his left my mother will always be without fail and when I was a boy I used to imagine that he would turn in a little towards her to show his favour, to show he loved her more. I think I went a little mad on the hope that he’d value me more over my brothers. But alas, he had three sons already. Three. Perfect. Legitimate sons.”

Augustus clenched his jaw and snorted before sidling over to the drinks cabinet in order to find something to make saying all of this better. Only whisky would really do now.

“My eldest brother murdered his first wife and the second daughter he ever had. One embarrassed us all by being divorced and getting fleeced of all his money. The last one never put a foot wrong. Not even once. He produced three living sons. One heir after another to the delight of our father. And there was me: the youngest and the biggest liability they had. Disposable, if you like, and desperate for approval and favour from all of them – not just my father but my brothers too. I knew it was a lost cause with my step-mother. Merlin knew it killed her to have to pretend I was her son when really …”

Augustus smirked, pouring a few fingers of whisky into two glasses. He put the stopper back in the cut crystal decanter and picked up the glasses, returning to Elsie’s side to hand one two her.

“You get the preamble because you need to understand that when the Death Eaters came calling, I was weak and stupid. I had skills. I was useful to them. I was an Unspeakable. I knew things about the Ministry that the Death Eaters needed and I … I was partly responsible for everything that happened during the second war. They played upon my weaknesses as a person and true to form I fell for it. My father … he thought it would be good for me. He said I’d find my purpose there. I’d make the family proud.” He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth thoughtfully as he moved to sit down on the sofa.

“It was my uncle who … the first Augustus Rookwood … who that rat Karkaroff named. I was working quietly. I wasn’t doing anything but feeding information back to the Dark Lord and the Ministry knew as soon as my uncle broke out with the Lestranges in ninety-six that treachery ran in the family. The searched the house. Arrested me. At the time they couldn’t find anything, either. I suppose getting off with it made me cocky and my family seemed pleased and I felt the first bits of approval from them that I had only ever dreamed about. And the Dark Lord …” Augustus shook his head. “I am grateful for your loyalty, Augustus,” Augustus drew out the s of his name, making it sound like a hiss in a slightly crude imitation of the way the Dark Lord had said his name.

“I confess I liked the power. I liked the purpose. We’re all connected to the Death Eaters, our family, but I was the second to go out and seize power … seize … seize … I suppose the position that I felt I was owed. I became a Death Eater because I was a weak young man who thought that pleasing others was a way to get favour … and by the time I realised there was none of the human left. None of the boy. I liked killing by then, I suppose. I liked playing God. I liked pulling the rug out from under the Ministry’s nose, too. I craved the power that the Dark Lord could give.”

“But,” he chuckled sourly, running his finger over the numbers engraved in his skin just below the crease of his elbow. “I got my comeuppance, I suppose. And when I was in Azkaban I understood where I stood with all of them. The Death Eaters. The Rookwoods. I am nothing, you see,” he chuckled humourlessly.  “I even missed the first few years of my son’s life. Sort of set up, I suppose, the bereftness of my paternal instincts.”

“I …” he sighed. “It’s not worthwhile, I’ll tell you that. The ideology is poison, built to accommodate the weak who seek power when really what it does is present the illusion of power and the weak are still weak. But once you’re a Death Eater … you don’t just stop, do you? So … I’m a Death Eater because the boy thought it was what he needed to be loved by his family and the man has yet to learn his lesson.”

“Why so curious, Elizabeth? Not going to be silly and ‘join the cause’ are you? There’s no cause left, in case you wanted to know. No flame … nothing for us moths to flock to and burn our wings on.”

He wanted the spotlight off of him now, before he could find it within himself to regret telling her the truth. Reaching up, he drew his fingers through his hair, mussing it out of its carefully set style.

“It goes without saying,” he told her quietly. “But I don’t wish to hear this being banded around. I told you in confidence because you asked and because I wasn’t going to tell you a load of twaddle." He bit the inside of his cheek. "Do you think I’m a monster, Elsie?” And, in truth, he really did care for her answer.

She felt a lump in her throat as he looked at her, his words “Getting right to it, are you?” cutting her a bit, even though they shouldn't have. She figured she had a bit of a right to know, as many times as she had been burned by the men in the organization. After so many instances, it was hard to ignore the common denominator, hard to call it all a coincidence. She wanted answers, she wanted to understand. She couldn't handle pain and ignorance. She deserved to be delivered from one of them.

Her arms were folded tightly in front of her, trying to regain some of herself after the shocking loss she had suffered. Empty Elsie, with hollow eyes and numb limbs wasn't the Elsie she wanted to face off against the Death Eater ideology. She wanted strong-willed but stupid Elsie, who knew that she had worth by sheer force of will, who would face Augustus with proud eyes and an unwavering spirit, because that's who she was.

So it was a bit unnerving that he managed to make her waver so early on. The world illegitimate made her arms loosen, wanting to fall to her sides. New money aside, Elsie knew enough about the culture she had been raised in to know that the words illegitimate and bastard were just as bad as poor.Illegitimate children did not grow up to be respected members of their society, like Augustus had. The word alone was enough to help Elsie fill in the gaps of how Augustus must have been treated before he was the great Augustus Rookwood. Mistrust, resentment, distaste - all from being born.

He had no real reason to tell her such a secret. Especially if it was still such a heavily guarded secret. It wasn't... smart, or strategic, to tell her something she could so easily use to ruin everything he had built. And that was the thing about purebloods, and the rich, and Death Eaters particularly. They didn't just give out information, they didn't get to know people through exchange of information. They were more clever than that, despite screwed up ideologies (and, let's be honest, the years of inbreeding to maintain purity). So why was he abandoning that now?

She listened, carefully, trying not to betray anything. Not wanting to betray the points that aroused pity, concern, irritation, uncertainty, sympathy. She was working so hard, and she just wanted to understand in a logical fashion, but he was making her feel for his own story and it made her so upset. This wasn't helping her understand - though it was making her feel safer and safer by the minute to be in the home of a Death Eater.

Still, she was struggling to understand where Ben fit into Augustus' explanation. Ben had always been the apple of their parents' eyes, had never wanted for anything, had never had a rebellious streak, had no familial ties to the organization. It wasn't for money, for revenge, for loyalty that he had fallen in with the Death Eaters. It had been all him, and she could not understand what they had to offer that could tempt him down so dark a path.

He asked if her curiosity came out of an interest to join and she felt herself straighten up, arms tightening again as she said, a little too quickly, a little too firmly, "No." She recognized that she was probably a bit too quick to answer, so she opened her mouth to try and rectify her answer in some way, but the only thing that managed to come out was a softer "no."

He continued to speak and she felt the weight of the accusation, though it wasn't quite an accusation, it was certainly a hint of one, a warning against one. She shook her edge, her mouth phantoming the words 'of course not' though she could not speak them because of that harsh word that came next.

Monster.

How could she deny that Death Eaters had always seemed to be monsters to her? From what she understood of wizarding history, they had been monsters. Their costumes were monstrous. The interactions she had suffered through had been the stuff of nightmares, had monster consequences on her life. They had always been monsters, until it had started hitting so close to home. After all, if they were monsters, that meant her brother was a monster. And she had a hard time believing that.

"I don't know," came her soft admission. She blinked at him, her arms loosening again in their cross across her chest. "I..." What? She what? "They have a bounty on my head. In America. The Death Eaters there. I didn't do anything, I just stumbled on something I shouldn't have because I was young and stupid. Suppose I still am. But they've tried to kill me. Twice. And they don't seem to have plans to stop. I literally check under my bed and in my closet. That feels like monsters." She stared at him. An exchange of information. With his information, she could kill his reputation. With hers, he could kill her.

She supposed that might settle who was the monster.

Elsie was remarkably quiet – though a part of Augustus supposed that it had something to do with his ability to hold the proverbial floor. He sighed softly and looked at the amber drink in the glass wrapped in his grasp and he licked his lips thoughtfully. When her voice lifted through the air, Augustus looked up. He blinked, a torrent of fear he wasn’t expecting slicing through him.

Putting down his glass, he turned and looked at her carefully, trying to see if she was telling the truth just by her expression. He wasn’t especially good at doing that without Leglimency mind you but he wasn’t about to use it on Elsie. By all accounts, she was very much telling the truth.

“We’re all guilty of being young and stupid,” he reminded her gently, “but we’re also entitled to it, too.”

Though, the idea that she had attempts on her life … a weird sort of feeling turned Augustus’ stomach and he got up. His hands found her hips – not for any particular reason that was untoward or seductive. No, he just wanted to feel her under his fingers as though to make sure that she was actually there, that she hadn’t been gotten and was now just a figment of his imagination.

“What did you find?” He asked, his eyes searching hers. He had not had many dealings with the Americans. Their fanaticism had always rather unsettled even him. He knew if his nephew met them, Theodore would probably run for the hills.

“They have to have a good reason for wanting you dead,” his fingers tightened a little bit as his voice wavered over the word, as though somehow with him she would be safe and that his presence somehow undid the problems the Death Eaters could cause her, as though he could cancel it all out.

But for the life of him he couldn’t decide why he cared so much.

“I am not going to hurt you, Elsie,” he said after a moment.

She had struck a nerve and she was curious to see what instinct overtook him now. Augustus was a businessman, and it must make sense that, if the American Death Eaters were willing to pay for her demise, then he should go to the aid of their allies and collect his winnings. She was ready to apparate away the second his intentions were made known, but she had to know, had to see further proof that she had every right to feel as though her brother had been stolen from her. She had to know her prejudice was rightful.

She wanted to remind him that all she had ever been was young and stupid. She could honestly define public sentiment towards her with those two words. It followed her, and it was how people discounted her feelings and thoughts, how they kept her as the silly Norton girl who would never really be a threat. She hated to consider it, but she knew that even Claire had sighed in exhaustion at how thick her best friend could be. She might have a right to it, but she was damn sick of it. When would she finally outgrow trouble?

He stepped forward and she prepared to escape, but the hands that took her were not confining or rough or suggestive. They were gentle and kind and concerned. As were the eyes that were trying to tempt her into looking at him. He wanted to know, but she couldn't tell him. That would be the end. He would know the weight of her information and, with her literally beneath his grasp, the bounty would be his to collect.

"I am not going to hurt you, Elsie."

She had no reason to believe him.

Then why did she?

She swallowed. "I found their leader."

He couldn’t put his finger on the why of the matter. He didn’t know what it was about this woman but she struck a chord within him that he hadn’t felt in years. This was someone that he honestly felt as though he cared about. He just didn’t know why.

Augustus closed his eyes and tried to compose himself but all he felt as the need to be around her, to have her in his arms, to know she was safe. Hearing those fabled words, the words that would have signed her death warrant, provoke a response he couldn’t control and he felt a surge of relief that he had picked Italy, pretentious though it was.

She was safe here, in this house, with him.

“I take it …” Augustus managed to get out, a wry little smirk lighting up his face. “It didn’t pan out well.”

Augustus flicked on the lights and strode into the kitchen, his hand immediately reaching out to flick the kettle on. He felt as though this wasn’t a conversation that needed alcohol. He’d had enough, as much as it disturbed him to recognise that. Instead he went to the cupboard and retrieved two mugs before beginning to hunt around for the ingredients to make some cocoa.

“Tell me,” he implored. “If you like,” he amended, not wanting it to sound like an order. “Aside from that … um,” it was mad to think but … did Augustus Rookwood actually sound nervous? “How do you like your hot chocolate?”