A/N: I wanted to write a surprise support!fic for a friend of mine, and this happened instead, ROFL. Trigger warning for self-harm.

Hate/Proof

Narcissa cannot get the words out. The quill breaks in like be damned if Lucius sees; she's tired—of chatter, yes, but mostly of the sick thing, the black thing. It started when she was very young.

After a time, there's a rap on the bathroom door. The playful pattern tells her it's her sister (the bitch one). "Meda," she heaves. Her voice is husked over with cigarettes and too little sleep. Ignoring this, Andromeda says the charm curtly and pushes inside.

Get away from her.

"You look god awful, Cissy."

"Thanks."

"No, I mean it; you look like a war."

And Narcissa probably is a war, or the tumbleweeds of one, anyway. Ink or something like it splashes medallions into her thighs, little round dollops of honor, and Andromeda's wand is poised like she can scab it all over, but she left, didn't she, and it's done, it's all gone.

Narcissa is very even when she tells her, "Lock the door."

With her free hand, she does.

Then Narcissa's hand is lashing at the wand—get it away, get it away from her legs—and Andromeda is pinning her wrist to the wall and hissing Episkey like a Stunner, and Narcissa cannot be numbed but cannot wriggle out from under her aim or her fucked love and just wants to be held at this point, truly—bound tightly enough to still her tremors and pressed cheek-down into the mattress, someone's hand weaving circles like spinning wheel into her back, anyone's, almost. She wants anyone's hand but Andromeda's, not Andromeda with her fix-all wand and loose lips that sting, every time, because Andromeda didn't stay. She wouldn't stay, and if Narcissa could just rewind the leaving part and keep her tethered…

She liked Andromeda better when she was always weeping. At least she was kind, then, and trying. "Let me up," says Narcissa. Andromeda's grip on her wrist is starting to pang, not that that's new.

When she releases Narcissa, it's like she's releasing the whole shebang with all of her body, positively recoiling from the closeness of their bloodstreams and splattering against the opposite wall. Unabashedly, Narcissa bends down to pull up the layers at her ankles one by one—underwear, pantyhose—back over her thighs and snugly under her dress robes.

It is a hate tattoo—a proof tattoo—that Andromeda is trying to erase, but she cannot get them out of Narcissa, not the the words and not the ink-mind, and get away from her, don't soften those eyes like that if she's not going to stay, and Andromeda never stays. She never stays for drinks, and she never stays for letters, and she won't be someone when the reception is over and Narcissa dislodges once again. She doesn't need patchwork. What she needs is for the bitch one to undo it, and that—well, she couldn't even if she wanted to, and Andromeda never passes up a chance to clarify how little she would want to.

Andromeda says steadily, "I could stay the night."

"Right."

"Bas can wait. That's a bad decision anyway."

"But you'd go in the morning," she says, and she hates the whimper.

"Yes, I'd go in the morning."

"Okay," says Narcissa, and it isn't fair. She will hold this against Andromeda in all the next battles, she's sure, and she will be the one to instigate them all. If she could help it—this, this, is the crucial part Andromeda and all of them are missing—by now, Narcissa would have stopped clutching.