(christine lestrange face claim = sasha kichigina)
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'the loneliest moment in someone's life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.'
[f. scott fitzgerald, the great gatsby]
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Blinding pain, like a thousand white-hot knives boring into her skin, eclipsed Adeline's senses as the Cruciatus curse met her back. She screamed instantaneously in a mixture of heavy sobs and agony that ricocheted off the walls. It felt like someone was stepping on her chest, forcing the breath from her lungs; like breaking bones and throbbing, endless cutting. It was hard to even comprehend the dark hardwood floors beneath her, or the hint of a sadistic half-smirk on the face of the Lestrange girl standing above her.
Like mother, like daughter.
Christine stopped the curse—although there was no relief in her doing so, as Addie, trembling uncontrollably on the ground, continued to sob in the aftermath of the pain. Christine stepped around her, like a vulture circling its prey; gripping her wand so tightly her knuckles began turning white.
"YOU THINK YOU'RE SO CLEVER, HUH? DIVERTING THE SPELL?" Christine bellowed, her chest heaving up and down, but Addie could've sworn it was Bellatrix's voice. "YOU COULD'VE KILLED HER!"
"...That was the plan—" Adeline mustered, wincing as she was met with a hard kick to the stomach—and screaming once more as the blinding red light of the torture curse emitted from Christine's wand again.
The pain seemed to last longer than ever before: so excruciatingly unbearable that, after a while, it felt like the screams leaving her mouth were distant. Everything felt far away—as though she were outside in the rain, hearing these sobs as muffled noises, looking in through the glass at this scene rather than being centre-stage for it. The pain was messing with her head. She felt it creeping into every fibre of her body, leaving nowhere for her to hide—as though she needed to escape this body yet couldn't find the exit in its four tall walls.
The red light vanished, but the pain remained; her body tensing and twitching occasionally as her sobs continued. At this point, Addie couldn't tell if her sobs were loud or completely silent. It felt like her head was underwater; any noise from above the surface was a muffled blur of incomprehensible sound—aside from a loud ringing in her ears that wouldn't stop.
Through her half-open eyelids, Addie saw Christine kneel down to her height and reach for something on the floor. Her mouth was moving—she was saying something, yelling, but the words meant nothing to Addie beneath the piercing high-pitched ringing in her ears.
