Chapter Text
Blaise Zabini knows many things. He knows his mother has plenty of love to go around, considering how new faces showed up every week at their inner-city townhouse. He knows his mother does not love him, because he’d once repeated a sentence he’d heard being exchanged between a classmate and their father, and she’d laughed in his face.
“You do not love me, Blaise,” Sabine Zabini had said, with all the delight of a mother reading a report filled with A’s.
“But-” Blaise had stammered. That was what children were supposed to do for their mothers, and vice versa, wasn’t it? He thinks he loves his mother. He does what he’s told, he’s never done badly in school, he doesn’t get in trouble and he doesn’t get in fights.
“Love,” his mother says, “Is weakness. I do not want you to love, Blaise.”
“But do you love me?” Blaise says, carefully, and if he had known the word, he would have described his voice as filled with trepidation.
Sabine Zabini considers this, head tilted, long, curled eyelashes lowered. “No,” she says, finally. “Go to your room.” and that was that. Blaise tries his best to close off his heart, the tapping at his sternum. He gets good at it. If he didn’t know better, a smaller, younger part of him would’ve guessed the look in his mother’s eyes was pride when he placidly tells his mother he’d dumped his fifth girlfriend in a month.
Blaise knows his mother’s wealth comes from dubiously legal sources. He knows how to shoot a gun, and a stake launcher, and a crossbow, and knows his house has an armoury tucked in the back of Sabine Zabini’s walk in closet. The kitchen knives aren’t just steel, which he notices when he nicks himself while cooking and the wound burns in a way a simple cut is not supposed to.
“Mom,” he begins, but stops with one hand on her bedroom doorframe when he sees she’s on the phone. She’s gossiping with someone, as Italians do, but she turns to him instantly when she hears his voice, one delicately manicured hand placing itself over the microphone end of her phone.
“Blaise? What is it?” Sabine Zabini motions for him to enter the room. “one second, dear; it’s my son,” she says, to the phone.
“My, uh,” he starts, feeling a little stupid. Already, the smarting pain of the cut had faded to a background sting which is easy to ignore. His mother simply nods, and Blaise feels himself relax subconsciously, shoulders easing back as he leans on her vanity. “I cut myself while cooking, and the cut really hurt.”
“Which knife?”
Out of all the words he might’ve expected from his mother’s mouth, her lips pursed in a thoughtful frown around those syllables, that isn’t it. Still, he answers readily; life with Sabine Zabini had left him with a lot of unanswered questions he was happy to note down for another day.
“The Damascus steel one- the expensive one you imported from Taiwan,” he says.
“Let me see your hand,” she says. It’s a command, not a question. Still, her hands are gentle and soft despite the extensive chemical burns and scarring covering her fingertips. Privately, Blaise wonders if there’s even feeling in her fingers at all, but her touch is gentle as she pokes a long, manicured nail at the cut. “You’re not going to die,” she says. "Just put a bandaid on it. And be careful next time.” She turns back to her conversation on the phone, but her words are not said in a dismissive tone.
“What caused it?” Blaise asks, quietly.
“Probably allergies of some sort,” she answers, easily. “We can go to the doctor if you like.”
“It’s okay, I don’t need to.” he says, and that’s that.
Blaise discovers he’s not the most ethical person in highschool. He sleeps around, just like his mother. He can find someone to warm his bed in less than ten minutes with his top button undone, showing off his clavicles, well-defined in a striking likeness of his mother.
He can do it with a half-lidded gaze that made you feel like there’s a universe of secrets he shared with you and a touch to the waist that could send sparks racing up the recipient’s spine. He knows these games, and he plays them well.
The sex is enjoyable, as much as the inexperienced teenage rubbing of genitals against each other can be, but he suspects he’ll get good at sex the way he did with flirting- with enough bodies and practice.
This theory proves to be true, which Blaise figures is a fun way to pass time when he doesn’t want to study. He doesn’t really have friends, only potential lovers, past lovers, and people who fit in neither of those categories. This is fine with him. Loneliness is familiar, and comforting, and Blaise doesn't think he'd change this even if given the chance.
Sabine Zabini is not the most attentive mother, but that’s fine with Blaise, who is freshly eighteen and about to graduate highschool with a string of broken hearts behind him and valedictorian, to boot. He never really liked that school- it was a catholic private co-ed school, as italian private schools tended to be. It’s not that the Zabini household is cold, per se. She looks after him well enough, a lot more than one would expect from someone nicknamed the black widow, of someone with a new body in her bed every week.
She doesn’t really cook, which is fine with Blaise, who knows the takeout places near him well enough. She doesn’t give him an allowance; he just asks for money, and she hands it over, no questions asked. She also doesn’t ask about school, or the girls and boys he brings home and kicks out in the morning. Sometimes she asks how he’s doing, to which the answer is always ‘fine’, because Blaise is fine, barring the way his limbs gave up on him sometimes.
The deep set ache he carries in his bones start when he’s sixteen. He’s been carrying it every day like a favourite keyring on the Porsche keys his mother drives.
For Sabine Zabini, that would be the “I <3 my mom” engraved in a silver disc like some sort of dog tag, which she looks at occasionally and laughs like it’s some secret joke between her and Blaise only, which Blaise supposes it is.
For Blaise Zabini, that’s the pain that makes him remove everything unnecessary from his bag, because his laptop was heavy enough by itself for Blaise’s aching knees and hips and shoulders. It’s a silly thing to do in retrospect, because the few keyrings he did keep were light things, made of fabric and cord rather than metal and plastic.
“Everything hurts,” he admits, voice breaking around the syllables as his throat involuntarily constricts, after Sabine Zabini had received a call from the school informing her Blaise was absent for the third day in a row. She doesn’t care about the school, which Blaise tops without studying. She frowns at her son curled up in bed, shivering in the twenty-four degree day.
She knows, of course, why this is happening, but her son cannot, not yet, not ever.
“I will take you to a doctor,” Blaise’s mother says. It’s not a question. It’s never a question. This is fine with Blaise too, because his mother is never wrong. In this case she’s incorrect with her semantics; the doctor has to be called for a home visit because everything in Blaise’s peripheral vision sparks like a bundle of frayed wires when he tries to move.
Blaise learns a new word that day. Fibromyalgia. He files this away in the back of his brain with an emotional he refuses to call resentment. It was fine that he had to quit his sports teams, fine that he had to attend weekly physical therapy, it was fine that he had to sit on the side during PE classes. The concerned looks his friends gave him were all fine. Having to pause and sit down in an empty classroom in between periods was all fine and well and good, Blaise tells himself. It’s only been a year, he thinks, in despair. What will the rest of my life look like?
Prescription narcotics save the rest of his high school journey, and he finds nicotine quiets the song his bones make when crying out in protest of him moving. His mother signs him up for physical therapy, and Blaise tries going to the gym, and doing yoga.
He still does, to an extent, but it really comes back to drugs, and to which he still hadn’t found the limit of his mother’s patience. She’d caught him smoking in their backyard after midnight and simply told him not to smoke indoors, as he’d ruin the expensive furniture she lovingly imports from France.
He’d told her Marlboro Golds are his favourites. Sabine had hummed thoughtfully, a small brush in her hand painting colour onto her lips. When she returns from her habitual outings, frequenting lavish hotels and pricey restaurants, she finds the time in between entertaining the women and men who hang onto her to stop at a gas station. The owner had raised an eyebrow at a woman dressed in a silk evening dress walking in, her designer heels clicking on the grimy tiles. Sabine asks for ten packets of Marlboro Gold.
Blaise is asleep when she finally makes it back home. She leaves it on the kitchen counter, before deciding to write a note. It’s amusing, in a way. She would’ve put it in a brown paper bag if she had one to hand.
Hi Blaise,
I got you your favourite.
Love, Mom
It’s a Tuesday night, a school night, two weeks out from graduation, when he walks into his mother discussing something with her lover of the week in the kitchen. There’s an uncharacteristically serious expression on her face. ‘Kitchen’ is a misnomer, because the kitchen was connected to the dining area, which was also connected to the living room in a large open floor plan which meant where the kitchen started and where the living room ended was rather nebulous.
He also vaguely remembers seeing this woman before, so maybe she’s a repeat hook up. Sabine had always been partial to women, after all. More partial to them than her seven dead husbands, anyway.
“Blaise,” his mother nods at him in greeting, arms crossed over her chest as she leans against the kitchen island.
“Hi, mom.” it feels silly coming out of his mouth. He’s taller than his mother by a good few inches now, almost double her weight in muscle, and his mother was already a taller-than-average woman. Despite this, his voice feels rather childish, but that could also be because of the laser-focused scrutiny his mother’s lover turns on him as soon as he enters the room.
She’s a striking woman, with double-lidded eyes smeared with dark eyeshadow and glitter in contrast to her pale skin. Her jet black hair is done up in a goth’s bat’s nest, and he idly notes she looks to be taller than his mother, because she’s sitting down at the kitchen bench right now, long legs tucked neatly under the barstool the same way Blaise has to do it because he’s too tall to sit there now. She’s also, rather conspicuously, dressed in one of his mother’s favourite bath robes. A favourite then, Blaise thinks. When she turns to face him he notices the piercings and jewellery dotting her face.
She’s appraising him, he realises, as he slides off his backpack and dumps it unceremoniously on the sofa. His shoulders smart with pain as he rolls the day’s aches off of them. It’s bad enough that he has to blink a few times before the world stops sparking with tv static.
“Will he do, Bella?” his mom is speaking again, but not to him.
‘Bella’ raises an eyebrow. “He looks fine physically, but I’d expect him to be in all sorts of pain right now.”
Blaise feels something in his stomach tighten with nerves. He reasons that his mother probably told her, but it still feels embarrassing to be called out so loudly, like the entire world could be eavesdropping. He’s fine. He slinks into the kitchen to find himself a snack, and bellatrix unsubtly turns to face his back as he rummages through the pantry.
“My son is strong,” his mother says, measured. Only the slight clipped quality to her tone indicates any sort of irritation at having to defend her son.
“I know he is,” Bella laughs. “I mean, he’s yours, isn’t he?”
“I’m sorry, but what are we talking about right now?” Blaise interrupts. His left hand had gone into his pocket and grabbed a fistful of fabric without him noticing before, since he’d walked into his house and found a stranger sitting at the kitchen bench, and he idly notes his hand is sweating.
“I’m Bellatrix,” his mother’s lover declares, putting out a strong hand for him to shake. A complete non-sequitur. She’s left handed, so he pulls his sweaty hand out of his pocket to shake hers, hoping the slight dampness wasn’t noticeable, and finds her skin to be oddly cold.
“Blaise,” he says, awkwardly. “it’s nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” she says, grinning with a mouth full of shark teeth. To his mother, she declares- “I like him. We’ll do it tonight.”
“Do what tonight,” Blaise says, rather desperately, gripping a box of cereal between the fingers of his right hand tight enough to leave indents in the cardboard. He’s well aware of his mother’s more illegal exploits, but she’d always taken care to distance him from it before. His mother only nods at Bellatrix, not looking at him.
“You’re eighteen, right?” Bellatrix looks quickly between Blaise and his mother, like she doesn’t know who she should be addressing this question to.
“Yeah, I turned eighteen last month.” Blaise says.
“Yes, he turned eighteen three weeks ago,” His mother says, at the same time.
Bellatrix nods thoughtfully. “Well, at least I’m not breaking another law." What law? Blaise thinks, rather frantically, before- "There’s no time like the present,” she declares, and before Blaise can react, she launches herself at him like a cat, or lion, or some sort of predatory animal, teeth bared directly for his throat.
He swears her eyes aren’t human, for the brief second he sees them, right up close as she makes contact, even as his hands instinctively come up to protect himself. It’s no use. Bellatrix is shockingly strong- inhumanly strong- and she pries his hands away effortlessly.
He dimly remembers the splatter of blood against venetian tile, which he is fairly sure is his, and collapsing to the ground, and yelling out for his mom, who only stands there, watching, with her arms still folded primly across her chest.
Blaise Zabini wakes up on the floor with a sore neck and his cereal spilt on the ground in front of him. The sun has set, making the tiles underfoot cold, which he bemoans as he peels his unresponsive body off the ground.
Instinctively, he touches his neck; it is whole and unmarred. He doesn’t know what he was expecting to find- a gaping mass of wounded flesh? A mottled scar? He doesn’t quite know what to answer that question with, but it leaves him feeling unsettled.
The white marble of his kitchen floor is pristine, and he wonders whether he’d just had a really weird dream after passing out on the tiles. He feels his pocket for his phone, before realising it’s gone. He checks his backpack, and the kitchen island, before finding it tucked between the bread box and the toaster, charging. Someone had unplugged the toaster’s outlet and replaced it with a phone charger, which his phone was connected to.
Blaise thinks he should probably call his mother, because if he’s passing out randomly, that probably warranted a visit to the doctor. The single notification he’d gotten in those five unconscious hours stops him in his tracks.
It’s a message from his mother; which he stares at, understanding the words but not their meaning, or intent. Blaise likes to think he understands his mother, better than the scores of wronged lovers she left in her wake, or the ego-bruised men she exploits. This assumption is challenged, now.
Your university application to Cambridge was accepted; you’ll be moving in a week.
Why had she waited until now to tell him? He knows it was probably just a nightmare fever dream, but the thought of his mother makes his stomach twist a little, the false memory of his mother standing there as his throat gets ripped out, his own blood splattering on the floor in quantities that surely couldn’t have all belonged to him. It’s too much. Too bright. Too red.
The house is empty, which he realises when he trudges upstairs. The familiar ache in his bones has subsided, oddly, despite him taking an impromptu nap on the kitchen tiles for what must’ve been a good five hours, considering the moonlight filtering in through the French windows lining the kitchen’s north wall.
Still, he’s tired enough to simply climb into his bed without bothering to shower, only dropping his phone on his nightstand before turning over to fall into sleep, as quickly as he previously woke.
In Blaise’s dreams, he is starving. He recalls opening his fridge to find it empty. He tries to find the hallway landline for takeout, but the phone simply rings and rings and rings, and his fingers slip off the buttons, and he eventually slams down the phone in frustration.
The kitchen is dark. So is the hallway. He pushes at the front door and finds it unlocked. The garden is dimly lit in the final minutes of twilight, solar powered lamps lining the front lawn flickering on.
He remembers starving for ages and ages. He remembers smelling something delicious, something that made his mouth water and stomach growl. Blaise feels, keenly, the lack of something he couldn’t quite name, but missed regardless.
He cries out for the pain that radiates out through his bones, and when he finds something to satisfy it, he can’t quite stop, even if he had wanted to. Something- someone- pulls at his shoulder. stop! Stop! he remembers crying in reply around a full mouth, liquid dripping down his chin.
Don’t stop me. I’m starving, he thinks. Then whoever it had been is pulled away, and he keeps on eating, and he can’t stop eating, and he thinks he must- he should’ve- felt sick by now, but it feels so good and he can’t stop at all.
When Blaise Zabini wakes up, his stomach is bloated like he’d eaten three full meals. He blinks slowly and moves a sluggish arm to pat the nightstand for his phone. Four am. He thinks he should probably go back to sleep, but he’s uncomfortably full, so he ends up staring at the ceiling for a while, halfway between slumber and waking.
He eventually musters the willpower to get up and go to the bathroom. After he flushes the toilet, he catches a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror, which makes him startle. He has to turn on the light just to ascertain what he was looking at was right.
There’s a little trail of blood running down his chin, leading from the corner of his lips. It’s dried and flakes off to the touch when he raises a hand to gingerly swipe at it, and he grimaces in disgust. He rinses it off in the sink, and when he drinks down a gulp of water, he realises there’s a grittiness caked to the top of his mouth, like he hadn’t brushed his teeth before going to bed.
Well, he hadn’t, had he? No, he’d been too tired. Blaise feels off-kilter as gives himself a once-over in the mirror- there’s no more blood, thankfully- like something fundamental had changed, a paradigm shifted. He shakes his head, which only makes him a little dizzy, before brushing his teeth thoroughly. When blood drips down into the sink, diluted into a pale pink with the white foam, he doesn’t even have the energy to be surprised.
He splashes water on his face and scrubs the sleep out of his eyes, suddenly having no desire to return to bed. There’s a strange ache in his jaw he can’t quite explain, but he’s used to the appearance of odd pains all over his body, establishing themselves in his domicile without a greeting or forewarning; a familiar stranger he carries with him every day.
He emerges from his bedroom to find his mother waiting for him. She’s leaning on the wall of the hallway facing his room, and she looks as dishevelled as Blaise feels. He jumps upon seeing her; he hadn’t expected anyone to be awake, and his sleep had been the opposite of restful, doing nothing to erase the sudden feeling of discomfort around his mother. Blaise shakes himself. She was his own flesh and blood, for God’s sake. He was being irrational.
“Blaise,” his mother says, carefully. She’s studying him, he realises. Her eyes run over him like she’s checking for injuries.
“Mom?” Blaise forces himself to speak, and his throat is dry. “Why are you awake?”
“I wanted to see if you were alright,” she says, and this is uncharacteristic of her. Sabine had never previously cared whatever Blaise was up to; whether he did drugs or went out to parties or hooked up with people, she considered none of her business. As long as he was alive, and generally tried to stay out of her way, she was satisfied with, and tried her best not to bother him in return.
This had made her an unintentionally standoffish mother, which she had realised when Blaise was thirteen, and subsequently made up for it in the only way she knew how- spending lavish amounts of money on him, which was probably wasted on Blaise, being a teenage boy and all.
Sabine rarely showed affection. Blaise doesn’t let it get to him; that’s just the kind of mother she is. He tries not to let the surprise show on his face now, but he doesn’t know how good of a job he does, and his jaw won’t stop aching. He realises he’s been standing there in silence, staring at his mother without saying anything.
“Well,” Blaise says, awkwardly, “I am.” There’s something odd in his mother’s face, like a shadow passing over her eyes, a hesitance previously unseen in her demeanour. There’s something wrong, terribly, terribly wrong, but Blaise can’t put his finger on it.
“How’s your fibromyalgia?” She suddenly asks, and Blaise realises she’s shifting awkwardly on the spot. This is new to him, having only seen his mother when she’s collected and prim, but he supposes this might also be a consequence of her distaste for affection; her casual-acquaintance relationship with her own son.
“Fine,” Blaise answers, truthfully. The usual weakness in his joints had subsided somewhat since he’d woken up, barring the sudden pain in his jaw. He briefly wonders if he should bring it up, but the way his mother’s face collapses into relief makes him decide against it.
“Good,” she says. “That’s good.”
Blaise shrugs his shoulders, feeling the absence of pain as much as the pain itself. He relishes the feeling, and hopes it stays with him for a while. It had been months since he’d been (almost) completely pain-free.
“Um,” he starts, and Sabine’s eyes flick to him instantly. He fidgets uneasily under the weight of her gaze. “Is something… wrong? Did the doctors say anything new?”
“No, no, nothing like that,” Sabine rushes out. “It’s nothing. I was just… worried. About you.”
Blaise nods, slowly. “Why did you only tell me about Cambridge now?”
“The letter only came through now,” His mother says, a shadow of her former self returning in the amused tilt of her lips. “Besides, I thought you hated your school. You always said you couldn’t wait to graduate.”
“I’m not just moving away from my school, I’m moving away from Italy,” Blaise protests, but he’s also grinning. The full weight of what her text had entailed hadn’t really occurred to Blaise when he first woke up on the kitchen floor, but elation surges through him now. He’d always known he was smart, but qualifying for one of the best universities internationally was still an achievement.
His mother smiles warmly at him. “I will have to move to my estate in Alsace,” she hums, thoughtfully.
“You don’t have to,” Blaise says, sheepishly. “Don’t move just for me. I know you’ve established a lot for yourself here in San Marino.”
Sabine waves her hand dismissively. “My dear, I was only stationary for so long because of you,” she declares. “I didn’t want to move while you were still growing up.”
Blaise stares at her, eyes wide. He’ll have to process this later, preferably over a packet of cigarettes, but while he hadn’t minded his mother’s relative absence in his life, something in his heart unfurls like a flower in the sun when he realises how much his mother had really cared about him.
“I… thank you, mom,” he says, suddenly, struck with a desire to hug her. He would say I love you, but the words hadn’t exited his mouth in so long that it had simply teetered on the edge of his throat and refused to leave.
Sabine Zabini seems to see this, too, and she reaches forward to embrace her son, now far taller than her. “Blaise,” she mumbles into his shoulder. “I love you.” The words sound similarly stuck in her throat, but she forces it out in a rare display of affection. Blaise thinks that as he grows older, he keeps unearthing more and more similarities with his mother.
“I love you, mom,” he mumbles, and the pressure on his ribcage from Sabine tightening her arms tells him she hears him.
In the morning, Blaise decides to go for a jog, but is interrupted when Bellatrix herself knocks on the door. He flinches when he spots her through the peephole, but reminds himself that it was just a random nightmare he’d had. It was rude to take it out on the real Bellatrix.
“Morning,” he says, opening the door. Bellatrix raises her eyebrows at him inquiringly.
“How’d you sleep?” She asks.
“Um,” Blaise starts, taken aback, and in lieu of answering, steps back to let Bellatrix in.
She doesn’t notice, or care about, his lack of reply, and asks a new question, which Blaise is much more equipped to answer. “Where’s Sabine?”
“My mother is upstairs,” he answers. “Why do you need her?”
“We,” Bellatrix declares, in a tone which would’ve made his mother sniff, “Need to talk.” Blaise wonders, briefly, if the we Bellatrix mentioned referred to just his mother and her, or all three of them.
Both of them turn as the sound of footsteps echo down the stairs, which connects to the middle of the open floor plan of Blaise’s house. It seems Bellatrix and Blaise have the same thoughts, because they both hurry through the foyer and into the living room, where Sabine Zabini is standing with her arms folded primly across her chest.
Blaise’s breathing quickens, and he focuses on the pain in his jaw to prevent his mind from wandering. This is too close to his nightmare, seeing Bellatrix and his mother in the same place, his mother even assuming the same pose. Thankfully, Bellatrix practically attacks his mother with the enthusiasm with which she kisses her.
“Ew,” Blaise says, sarcastically, as though he’s fourteen again and afraid of girl cooties. If his voice shakes a little, both women pretend they don’t hear it. Both are well aware of why.
“Bella,” Sabine says, voice rough from sleep. “Why are you here so early?”
“We need to talk! You made me agree to this, remember?” Bellatrix grips Sabine’s hand and looks at her pleadingly, which throws Blaise for a loop. He’s unsure of how someone as tall as Bellatrix can look up at someone who’s quite a bit shorter, but she manages. Maybe it’s just because his mother has such a presence.
“Uh,” Blaise says, and swallows. Memories of cereal and fear and blood filter back to him, and his pulse quickens. He absentmindedly grips his right arm with his left hand, feeling the pads of his fingers dig into his wrist bones.
Bellatrix’s voice cuts through his thoughts. “Zabini! What are you doing?” And cold fingers dig, neither gentle nor painful, at his hand, forcing him to let go of his wrist. “Snap out of it,” Bellatrix says, and her heavily-lined eyes are right in front of him, cutting right through to his soul.
Blaise stumbles back. Bellatrix lets him, and he hits the small of his back on the back of a sofa chaise.
“Blaise?” his mother is speaking. “Blaise, you’re alright.”
“Yeah,” he says, automatically. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.” Blaise blinks rapidly. Bellatrix is watching him carefully, and his mother is stepping towards him with something like guilt written on her face. But what was she guilty for? It must’ve been something closer to worry, and he was mistaken, and maybe he can’t read her as well as he thought.
“What are we here for?” He bursts out. He can’t stand the silence. It reminds him of when he was younger and his chronic illness had just started to wear on the nerves of everyone around him.
Bellatrix seems to understand, because she immediately draws back with a feigned cough into her hand. Smooth. “We’re- well, you’re going with me to England. I’m to be your guardian while you’re there.”
Blaise blinks. “I’m an adult now. I don’t need a guardian.” Remembering his manners, he ducks his head and quickly interjects, “But, uh, thank you. For the offer.”
Sabine places a hand on Blaise’s shoulder. “I think you do, darling. Just- think of this as being for my benefit. I will worry a lot about you.”
“I know, mom, but I’m an adult now.” Blaise tries to keep the petulance out of his voice- where had that come from? He supposes it’s from a combination of his fibromyalgia flaring up and his exhaustion from his sleep schedule being messed up.
Bellatrix looks uncomfortably at anywhere but Blaise. “Look- Sabine has- history in England, alright? I need to look after you because-” Here, she waves her hand in a strange gesture that Blaise interprets as sheepishness, which looks strange on her- “You need to be introduced. To the…”
Introduced to what, Blaise doesn’t know, because Bellatrix trails off, and Sabine leans forward, patting a manicured hand on Blaise’s forearm. “Gang connections, dear. I don’t want my past to affect you while I’m there. But I also want you to learn something of my… area of expertise, while you’re there. Bella will be the perfect teacher.”
“Why can’t I learn from you?” Blaise mumbles. He looks doubtfully between Bellatrix, who has emotion written clearly across her face, and is burning off nervous energy by pinching the skin on her collarbones, and his mother, who is unreadable, too deliberate with her movements, even as her face twists with soft concern. They're very different- total opposites, though across which dichotomy, he doesn't know; foils, he thinks.
“Italy is too dangerous. You know how the Cosa Nostra are.” Sabine says, and there’s a finality in her voice Blaise knows better than to argue with. Still, he wonders where this had all come from. His mother had never had such a heavy hand in his life before.
Regardless, it’s not like he minded; Blaise had hardly been thinking at all of the future that lay before him. It was nice to have someone else make the decisions for once- as they say, better late than never.
He turns to Bellatrix. “So… do I call you stepmom, or what?”
Bellatrix chokes on air, and Sabine laughs. Loudly. Uncharacteristically. Blaise studies his mom carefully. For some reason, he feels like he ought to do so now, while he still can.