( grace )
Draco Malfoy never claimed to be invincible. Somehow, he thought this would save him.
--
There's snow on the ground when he lands in it, soft and powdery and accepting (somehow accepting, but snow is just frozen water, right? It doesn't do anything but fall). He leaves a mark, an imprint of a body laying there with no point or purpose except to leak away the body fluids in a stained-snow red. It's a bright, cold, clear day.
And he doesn't think he's ever felt more alive.
It seems so right to him, somehow so fitting, that the world should end on a clear day like this. That he should die on a bright December morning, frigid and clean and so god-damn hopeful that it hurts. Burns somewhere inside, the idea that anything could have happened today.
It's so beautiful. He stares up at the sky, blue and completely clear - the first sunny day in months - and laughs. Laughs while leaking his life out of his side (somewhere near his heart, but he's beginning to believe that he doesn't have much of one, anyway). He laughs because it's so damn ironic. Today's supposed to be the day when it all gets finished. Today's the day when it's over, and he's survived so long to be killed by an errant curse right before the end. It's funny, and only bittersweet at best. Somehow, he can't quite find it in himself to be afraid. Not when the sun is so bright in the sky.
He hasn't seen the sun since he was in school. Now it watches him anxiously, as if he's gone a little bit mad (which he has, but that's no surprise, anyway). Glares off the snow, as if it's somehow the snow's fault that he's bleeding all over it.
He will never know the outcome of the war. And right now, he doesn't care to.
--
He was always such a coward back then. Too afraid to take a stand, too afraid to be wrong, too afraid to look like a fool, that he never actually did anything. Sure, he was a dick, but that never counted anyway. Nobody ever remembers the jerk from school as being anything but a jerk. He never, ever picked a side and stuck with it.
He just followed his father like a sick puppy, thinking, stupidly, that father knows best (which he didn't, because Draco's father was more of a coward than even him because when things got too hairy in the Death Eaters, Lucius tried to run away from it all, which ended badly in a lake somewhere in Romania. Draco never did find out where they cornered him, nor did he ever see the body. They didn't mention it, and he never asked.)
For being a follower all of his life, he certainly handled being alone well enough. Eventually, he found out, there comes a point in everyone's lives where they realize that they're in too deep to ever get out, and at that point, fighting is useless. So he just sort of let go. Blocked his mind off from the screams and the murder and the fear, let it all wash over him, ignored the way it made him sick, ignored the way he was beginning to think about his father (maybe he wasn't a coward, maybe he was smart, maybe he was more compassionate, because dying somewhere in Romania must be better than this) and went with it.
Just going with it always seemed to work out before, so he figured it would now. And it did, in a "you're a good little Death Eater apprentice" kind of way. If you're cool with killing people for the hell of it, then sure. It worked just fine.
He wished he could have been fine with it. But he was never satisfied with complacency.
--
It's getting harder to breathe. The fear is setting in.
--
In retrospect, there really wasn't anything wrong with any of them - Potter, Weasley, and Granger. They did what they thought was right, and he was a dick to them. Cut-and-dry, nothing else. That's how it was, and there was no claiming otherwise. He couldn't repent now, and he wouldn't even if he could. What sense was there in apologizing for something he wasn't sorry for? He felt no remorse for how he treated them. Whether they deserved it or not was entirely irrelevant.
But they weren't that bad. Even funny sometimes. Might have been friendly if he'd been nicer. But who cared? It was the past. Right or wrong never mattered to the past.
He did wish he'd been a little kinder, though. Maybe he would have had more options if he was.
--
All he can see is the sky, blue and bluer and fading in and out, white to black, and then back to blue. The moon is already out, pale and wan in the corner of periphery. He doesn't see the snow around him, blood-red like life and fire and the color of his master's eyes. He's glad he can't. He doesn't want to see the pristine whiteness tainted by him.
The blue is better, brighter, whispering words of consoling in his ear, soft and inaudible and far-away like gods or angels or mothers in the doorway watching her babies sleep. Something calming, but the bile is rising, and he's afraid.
Afraid of dying, of death, of -
--
Voldemort always seemed to be disappointed in him. Nothing he ever did was enough for the self-proclaimed Dark Lord (Lord of what he wondered, on days when there was no one prying into his mind, in moments where treason of the heart was safe because there were no fingers to condemn). Somehow, he always fell short, and when Voldemort was disappointed...
He had the scars to prove it all. This was not the life he'd dreamed of. Never, in all of his years, did he imagine living in torture and fear with a permanent red sheen under his fingernails (out, out, damned spot!) and a permanent black stain on his name. Death Eater, huh. Murderer. You steal children's daddies. You're a horrible person.
It wasn't like anyone ever said that to him, though. The only person who ever told him the truth was Granger, moments before it began snowing, with acid in her voice - You aren't worth the breath to curse.
And he wasn't, never was, never imagined he would be. Being worthy of hatred was never on top of his priorities, and being worthy of praise wasn't all that high either. Just surviving, day to day, that was what mattered. Because survival was key. If you could keep breathing, you could make it in the Death Eaters, assuming you never let your emotions get in the way.
Stay numb and stay breathing. That was all he needed.
--
A sharp pain lances through his chest. He feels guilty, strangely, for staining the snow.
It'll never be beautiful and clean and new again. But the sky beckons, because it always beckons, because the sky doesn't know how do to anything but reach out and take what belongs to it - stars and moons and suns and earths and tides and dying little murderers who threw their lives away out of cowardice.
There's forgiveness in the blue, and salvation.
He closes his eyes.
---
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(A/N: Winner of the May 2007 Scrivenshaft Challenge - "In the Balance" - in the category "Eureka!" for most insightful entry. Review if you like.)