"O starry night, This is how I want to die." -Anne Sexton

Draco knew he was dying long before his eyes closed.

Too heavy, always too heavy and he wasn't even sorry that he lost the fight to keep them open.

The telltale metallic smell of blood was all around- soaking through his white shirt, turning it a rusty brown, and then spreading further along the rocks and dirt beneath him. A forest, he thought, circled round him. The gnarled branches above hadn't quite blocked out the stars but they flickered ever dimmer and Draco wasn't sure whether it was the deepening light or his fading eyesight. Somewhere to his left a river groaned on its journey to deposit some of the heavy ice it was laden with.

Draco had been on his knees by the time he finished apparating and collapsed only a few breaths after.

It had only taken a few scant heartbeats for everything to go to hell.

The attack had come with a swift intensity none of them had expected. Dumbledore's precious Order of the Phoenix had been all but wiped out but those that remained had learned how to fight dirty.

If he wasn't dying, Draco might have been impressed.

The wand work had been a touch off from shoddy but the ambush was executed with a subtlety that he didn't know the Order possessed.

And to think it had only taken them a year to muster up any semblance of challenge.

One year to the day since the world imploded, since the line between the good and bad had become that much more pronounced.

Funny that he felt his own world had faded to a messy grey.

A year filled with nightmares that he kept at bay by pushing his body to stay moving long after the skin under his eyes had darkened. And prayed that his mind would be too exhausted to conjure up new horrors.

Horrors that were really memories.

Vivid memories of death and blood and smoke. He had stopped counting the times his had almost been taken and the times that he had taken others. A year living up to the mark that had been engraved into his very skin. His very soul. And collecting new scars in the process.

A year since Snape had died and Potter had failed and disappeared.

A year of searching and never finding. Of countless enemies and few friends and none that he trusted. None who trusted him. Only a fool would trust a Death Eater, especially one of the few favored of their Dark Lord.

Lucius' fall from grace had been abrupt, as was Draco's rise to take his place. Unlike his father, Draco had kept his position- not through pretty words and piles of gold, but through cunning and blood and sweat.

And tonight was supposed to have been Draco's final test. It seemed simple enough. They had received word that three or four members of the Order were meeting. Draco and a few others were to rid the world of their existence.

He thought it would be Lupin. Maybe one of the Weasleys. One of the foolish teachers at Hogwarts who had cast their lot with the doomed Order.

What he got had been something very different. Even now, he wondered if Voldemort had known. Had sent Draco because he suspected there was still weakness in Draco. Because of her.

Nymphadora. Tonks. His cousin.

In the still silence that seemed to leak into moments of violence, just before the air had crackled and spun with spells, Draco had been taken with memories- things he hadn't thought on for years.

He had only been five or six but Malfoy Manor had been a little less cold and lonely when she'd come to play with him. He could remember the sound of her laughter- not charming and demurred like the other highborn ladies attempted, but great swells of noise that seemed to come straight from her gut. Lucius had warned her then that she would never find a suitable husband with hair that resembled cotton candy. Or scraped knees and dirt under fingernails.

But Tonks had never been one for deception, odd for sure, judging by how the others in her family excelled at the art. She hadn't cared what his father thought and Draco had secretly worshipped her for that alone. At least for a time.

Before he learned that she was a traitor, a Muggle sympathizer. A werewolf lover. That knowledge had been enough for Draco to banish her from his mind.

But when the time had come to kill her, to make her pay for her treason, Draco had remembered her bright eyes, crinkled in laughter. He hadn't wanted to think of it. But he had.

And Draco had never killed a woman.

The half second of hesitation had been enough.

In the end, it was a relief. To be done with it all, to be able to give up in a quiet place without anyone accusing him of being a coward. No one would know how often he wondered what would have happened if he had made a different choice a year ago. Or if he had a different father. If the blood that ran through his veins wasn't so pure.

At least the pain had begun to fade- the great burning patches of charred skin where half a dozen spells had caught him were still open and weeping but the combination of the cold dirt below him and the chilled air had numbed all but the worst injuries. His fever had taken care of the rest and abandoned his mind in that hazy forgotten space that might have been reality if the world had shattered like a time turner.

As his vision began to tunnel, Draco could hear his father's voice in his head. Absentmindedly, he wished it was his mother instead. She was nowhere near perfect and more than a little disillusioned but her voice, always too husky for her own refined taste, would have been soothing compared to his father's rough berating tone.

For being weak.

For having the audacity to die without finishing his task.

If it hadn't hurt so much, Draco might have laughed and offered up one last middle finger to the old man.

Let him witness his son bleed out. A warped kind of poetic justice to be sure. Except Draco knew the world wasn't fair and that in all probability his father was alive and hiding in some dark hole. And when the sun rose, after Draco was dead, he would crawl out and run back to Voldemort like a whipped dog.

And that would be that.

His mother would be alone, in the middle of a war she hadn't really wanted, one she didn't know how to fight.

One that she knew could cost her a husband and son everyday.

For family honor. Pureblood honor. A wizard's honor.

Funny Draco didn't feel very honorable at the moment, about to sacrifice his life for the cause he was raised on.

He just felt tired.

The world lay muted in the darkness, so still that he could hear the snow falling, could imagine the great fat clumps of white drifting down, down, down.

Time passed- seconds or hours, Draco was beyond being able to tell. There was a sound to his right, perhaps footsteps, crunching lightly. Timidly wondering closer.

But Draco didn't hear.

Half a dozen miles to the south was a small town where people fell asleep in their beds with no thoughts of war and death and blood. A world away. Further it felt.

Draco burned.