In The Heat Of The Night

You'll be a lover in my bed

And a gun to my head

We must never be apart

We must never be apart

Ava Adore by The Smashing Pumpkins

He gritted his teeth and threw his head back in pain as the Dark Mark burned with a vengeance on his arm, like a someone was pressing a flame into the very centre. The Dark Lord had wanted to see the Death Eaters a couple of hours ago to punish them all for the Ministry managing to kill and capture a good few of their number. They had been new Death Eaters who had rushed into fights without thinking, not that they dared tell Master this. His punishment it seemed was to allow the burning from the Mark to linger for a few hours afterwards, a slow constant form of torture. Add this to the injuries that he gained in Azkaban and the night had been quite painful for him. He felt the hot trail of fire ran up the scar on his leg, where the three Aurors had made him their nighttime entertainment only a few nights ago, before he and a few others had found a way to escape by knocking out the Aurors who had served them their breakfast one morning. But Christ on a broomstick they were bad nights, the bastards had tortured him into the early hours of the morning before Fudge had made the rounds. Any curse, any weapon, anything they could use they did. He only screamed once though in the three weeks he was there, that something he was proud of. He and Malfoy took it quite well considering; you could hear Dolohov's screams every second or so. Those screams echoed in his nightmares, the long drawn out shrieks that pierced the silence that he and other defiant Death Eaters maintained. But it wasn't the fact it was Dolohov screaming. He couldn't give a shit about him, not then in Azkaban and not now lying in his warm bed at home. It was in his nightmares he watched the Aurors torturing her, and Dolohov's screams came out of her mouth and he couldn't do anything to stop them. In his nightmares he tried to fight, to stop them from slowly killing her, one of the few things that made his life worth living. In his nightmares he wasn't even sure if he was even in the room as he watched them but all he knew was that he screamed as they laughed when they pulled the flesh from her body.

That's why he never slept until he heard her come home. He only slept when he saw her peep around the door and stick her tongue out at him before walking in and going to change for bed, fresh bruises and scratches on her skin, replacing the old ones that were slowly fading from her skin like the fading photograph. Every hour that passed the more the thoughts overcame him, like the night slowly takes back the land. She was his companion, his nurse, his lover, his everything. And the longer she was out, the more chance that she could be laying in a pool of shit and blood somewhere, killed by someone faceless and nameless. Which was one of the reasons he had always objected to women doing such jobs, it was inhumane for women to die such ways. He had been smacked for that, been called a 'misogynistic arsewipe' and had the silent treatment for about an hour. They had made up of course, they always made up. He was as devoted to her as he was devoted to the Dark Lord, and she was devoted to him. Some men would have called her bizarre, with her almost transparent white skin and her jet-black hair. Some men would have called her the opposite of what a women should be. Well Walden Macnair is not the average man and Celeste Earnshaw is not the average woman.

However she was a woman and women had the power to drive a man slowly mental. The female species have this bizarre power to have men on their knees begging for forgiveness, even when they have no idea what they've done wrong. Women said one thing and meant something entirely different. Women travelled in packs and every wrong move, every little thing done was banded around the pack, with the man being ripped to pieces by the self righteous, self-superior group of women. In short, what hope did men have when faced with the she-wolves? All this had happened since time began. Eve had tempted Adam, the Black Widow killed her mate and Clara Macnair had nagged and scolded her husband into an early grave. Celeste, however, was something different. A woman with all the faults that defined her gender but with something else that made all those insignificant. He was sure that in the early days that she would have told her little group of friends everything. From the minute details of their first few dates to the first time they slept together (incidentally the time she found out he was a Death Eater). Celeste could nag and shout and bitch as well as any woman. But there was something different to her. She wasn't dependent on her friends like some women were, she didn't beg for their approval for every tiny thing. She somehow managed to be within the little sphere of women and yet be totally independent of it at the same time.

He moved too quickly as he heard footsteps nearing the door and a particularly sore bruise caught against the sheets, the fierce burning resuming once again as Celeste stuck her head around the door and poked her tongue out. He managed to do the same at her before any point in pretending everything was fine went out the window as his entire back began to ache.

"Fuck me!"

"With pleasure. Are the wounds still hurting?"

"Yeah, only this time they've decided that causing me pain on their own is just not fun anymore, so now it's all at once pain. Fucking Aurors. Bring back Moody, that's what I say, at least he was honourable."

"Awww, poor baby." She walked over and spread the soothing balm over his back, kissing the bruises. He turned to smile at her and noticed for the first time her split lip. He rubbed it gently with his thumb and she winced. She looked in deep thought at the bed for a moment before turning back to look at him.

"Your friends are pricks. I had the lovely honour of having my lip split by Avery and I did cart Nott off to Azkaban."

"Celeste, since when has Nott been my friend? I can't stand the fucking bastard, not since he conned me out of fifty galleons in 81. I hope you do know he'll be out in weeks? Which makes sending him to Azkaban pointless because deep inside the thick skull of his there's a brain somewhere, so why send them there? What about Avery, he been carted off? The poor bastards got enough on his plate."

"You're a moody sod, d'you know that? No. He ran off when he hit me, it was with something frigging sharp too. I don't think he knew it was me at first, my hair was everywhere. Oh and to complete the evening Alamus Clayfield showed up and asked me did I want to go to Azkaban and meet Fudge so I could 'bask in my achievements.' Read between the lines and it was really asking me 'Hey Celeste, why not spend an hour and half with me in a carriage so I can lecture you on what an evil nasty git Walden Macnair is and how you're better off without him.' I only had to look at him and I wanted to slowly rip his head off with a blunt spoon."

He laughed and she leant her head against his chest. That was one of the things that he had fallen for in her. In Celeste, he had found a woman with a thirst for violence to match his own. Walden thrived on killing; he had made an art form out of it. Whereas the other Death Eaters simply used Avada Kedevra on their victims and left them there, he found new inventive ways to end a life. The Muggle couple that he had killed the park was one example; where after they were dead he sat them on a bench and placed the man's arm around the woman. Most women would have been repulsed at this; Celeste had simply nodded and had allowed herself a quick smile, although she had been distant with him for the rest of that day though. She never killed Muggles for the fun of it; she killed when she had to, to survive. However her enjoyment came from knowing that whatever pain she felt was beyond comparison to the pain her enemies would feel. She, like him, revelled in the pain she caused. He kissed the top of her head and she looked up, kissed him and in a moment of comedy, fell off the bed.

"Bollocks." Celeste pulled herself up and glared at Walden who was trying not to laugh. She turned and walked to the bathroom calling him a "Scottish bastard" before slamming the door. He rubbed the rest of the balm in himself and listened happily as she threw stuff around. For some reason the sound of stuff landing in water gave him an attack of the giggles and Celeste's cat Lola looked at him warily from her place at the windowsill. Walden giggled at the cat, remembering the time when he was eleven and threw Bertha Jorkins' cat into the lake. He would never do that to Lola though, not if he wanted to keep the Macnair family jewels fully intact. The door at the far end of the room slammed open and Celeste stood there sneering. Her lip was still bleeding and there were the beginnings of dark bruises appearing on her pale skin.

"And that," he said, "is the reason I will never agree with women doing such work. It's barbaric, sending you in to get the crap kicked out of you. Can't you ask for a desk job or something?"

"You are such a chauvinist. Women fought for years to get equal opportunities. Even today, female Ministry workers are still paid less than men. And it's people like you, Walden Macnair, keeping it that way."

"I don't know why you're complaining. You still get paid more than I got when I worked there."

A book from the dresser was thrown and landed on the wall above his head, which promptly landed on a tender burn mark. He jumped in pain and threw the book straight back.

"You had it coming Walden." She stalked over to the bed and got in as far away from him as possible before moving over and laying her head on his chest and ticking the underside of his chin. When she looked up he caught her upper lip and gave it a quick nip, an unwise move seeing as he now had her blood in his mouth. He savoured the coppery taste for a second before he swallowed and allowed her to poke a fading bruise.

"I'm going to kill Avery for doing that to you. Stupid arse. He's seen you enough times, he should know it's you by know."

"I told you, my hair was everywhere. Bellatrix is looking well by the way. Narcissa was telling me that her and the Big Cheese are very close, if you get where I'm going. That's another thing I avoided. Alamus droning on at me about being friends with people like Nacissa. He called me into his office last week to lecture me about that. Something about opportunities to capture particularly dangerous people but I'd stopped listening by this point. I think I said something along the lines of 'Well I don't think they're dangerous to me personally. And if they are well hopefully they'll finish Fudge off for us."

"Does Alamus ever shut up? I've had one conversation with him and I couldn't get a word in edge ways. Bellatrix and the Dark Lord have always been together like that. Ever since she was about seventeen. The only reason her and Rodolphus got married was so that they could both look good in respectable society. Whatever that means, I mean it classed Malfoy as respectable until a few weeks ago. I hate the fucking lot of them."

"Tell me about it," Celeste said, looking at his burn mark and gently running her finger over it. "I wish I could leave. The entire lot of them just sit on their fat arses all day and you don't see them going out and getting killed do you? No, they send people like John and Su-Li out to die, who shouldn't die but do because of some shit that decides that Fudge and friends' lives are much more valuable than the rest of us." Celeste looks at him and sits up. He knows before she even opens her mouth what she's going to say. "You've asked haven't you? Malfoy, Rookwood, Mulciber. Have you? Because we've all been looking for clues, when we're supposed to be doing something not important like paperwork. I said you'd ask and so have you?

"I asked. Every single one of them. I showed them pictures of John and Su-Li and not one of them said they'd even seen them, let alone killed them." He takes in the look on her face, the whiteness draining the red as she bites her lip and the blank look in her eyes, when the fire goes and she becomes little more than a shell.

"Well that leaves two options. Either one of them is lying or it's an inside job. A Ministry worker did it. Which is the past fucking repeating itself because that's what my father died saying about my mother. That someone within that fucking building killed her. I can't do this anymore, Walden. If this was at some other time I'd leave but I can't."

She doesn't break. He's proud of her for that. She doesn't cry, even though she could, Merlin knows in her line of work she's been through enough. She looks at him and he can see it all there, the deaths of so many around her and the suspicion and hatred she faces every day just because she's stayed with him. He's asked her why she stays with him throughout it all. He's asked her to join the Death Eaters and leave her Division and she refuses. And her answer comes in many guises but it always means the same thing. "Because I'm loyal". To him, to her Division and to her family she's loyal, and that's a lot of people but somehow she manages. He's asked her hundreds of times to join but she refuses and says it's got something to do with a promise made to her father before he died. She's even loyal to the sodding dead, who in Walden's view won't really care if she's loyal or not. He kisses her deeply and strokes her hair, whilst saying comforting words that don't make any sense. And he knows that when he goes to sleep and dreams of Dolohov's screams coming out of her mouth, he knows that she'll kiss him, and stroke his hair and say things of comfort that make no sense.

Walden Macnair doesn't like women, but for Celeste he'll make an exception.