Hah! I know it's been ages, but I don't have computer at present, and I dare people to try and write these updates in a public library!

As always, many thanks to my reviewers, you are the best people in the world :)

Chapter Two - So I, for fear of trust, forget to say

"It's never easy, is it, Harry, making yourself do what is expected of you when all you really want is something else," the voice was low and caressing, and as familiar as the first touch of dawn stroking blades of grass. The hissed syllables touched things inside that he didn't want to think about; stirred them and made them look up. All of the horrors of the seconds between moments.

He turned from looking out over the craggy landscape to look into a face so like his own that it would have fooled the unwary watcher: black hair lifted by the wind but not tousled, styled and perfect; cheekbones under skin pale and perfect, as if by design rather than touched with malnutrition and lack of sunlight; body slender, well proportioned and muscled like a gymnast or swimmer rather than skinny and underfed.

But it was the eyes that told them apart.

The eyes that watched him, so full of amusement, were like bloodstone, green speckled with red like blood splattered holly. Pupils, elongated like a serpent's, widened slightly in the dim twilight that surrounded them. "What do you mean?" He knew his voice sounded wary, or weary, or some combination of both but he couldn't summon the strength to care.

Ruby lips curled upwards at the corner – a fallen angel's smile – innocence and sin mingled and brilliant. He wondered if anyone had ever seen him wear that smile, or had pictured him wearing it as his own voice answered, husky and touched with...pity?

"You're never allowed your own choices, are you? One way or another, you were born to be someone else's tool. Even taking your own life is denied you." The other moved closer to him and gentle hands touched his face – calluses from a broomstick gently caressing – and those eyes, brilliant and blood-stained, locked with his and there was pity there. Yes, pity. Like a wolf before the deer – hungry and feral. "They want you as a weapon, Harry my love, but I know differently, like you do... You weren't born to be a weapon…"

Those sinful carmine lips touched his gently, and he felt the burning pain in his forehead. Agony – piercing, sweet, and beautiful as a whisper chased into his mind. More intimate than any touch.

"…you were born to die..."

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It wasn't a scream that woke him from his uneasy doze by the fire – although he suspected that it should have been. Potter's sleep/unconsciousness had been still, only the boy's breathing letting him know that that the battered child was actually still alive. It was a hitch in that breathing, a whimper half made or a cry stifled whilst aborning, that stirred him to full wakefulness. He wasn't a healer, hair-triggered by a patient's sound of pain, just a mercifully light sleeper.

Getting up, he wandered over to the bed, ready to see a wound trailing blood, or some other suitably melodramatic way of expressing pain that only someone like Potter could manage. But there was nothing there, only the boy's mouth open, as if he were waiting to be kissed by some phantom lover, and the tense strain of someone in terrible pain. There had been horror and despair written there before, but not agony.

With a hand made gentler than normal, Severus reached out to brush back overlong hair from Potter's forehead. He looked like a sheepdog, like that mutt of a godfather of his. Neither were looks that suited the boy. The very tips of his fingers swept over the familiar, famed lightning bolt scar and pain darted through his forearm like boiling water over the skin. The curse word that left his lips was pungent and all gentleness disappeared as he shook Potter like a rag doll.

The boy's eyes flickered open, green like perfect emeralds, but there, at the heart for a second, was a ruby flaw. Terror wrapped around Severus Snape's heart like a hungry boa constrictor and it squeezed and squeezed, robbing him of breath. "Potter?" He heard the question in his voice, a flaw in his usually well-practiced tones, but he had to know. Had to be sure of what he'd rescued from the pool.

Those eyes focused on him, slow as a glacial ice age and he wondered if the boy had managed to damage anything inside of his head during his attempt at ending the life-that-would-not-end, and then they focused, hard as diamonds. "Sir…" Hesitation then, as if searching for the right words in that soft broken tone that tugged at places Severus was certain he'd cut out with his own hand. "…let me go, please."

Let me go, not why anymore. The boy didn't seem to care: just let me go, just turn your back. It would be that simple – and that difficult, because if he did so the boy would die. The pool of dark reflections would swallow him whole and those eyes didn't deserve to die, not with such broken, shattered innocence within them. "No," his voice was calm but firm. "I saved your life, Potter. That means that its mine, and I choose not to let you end it."

Mine. He hadn't quite meant to put it that way, but there was something possessive about…something. He shook his head, pushing the thoughts away. If a wizard's debt was what it took to keep Potter alive, then that was what he would use. He looked deliberately down his nose at the boy, into those confused eyes, and let one corner of his mouth twist into a smile. Anger could, he remembered, be everyone's ally. "And what do you suppose, Potter, your saintly" father would think of that."

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No.

Snape had said no to allowing him to die. He didn't want his death, which was wrong. He knew that Snape hated him, knew it deep down with the passion of the eleven-year-old he had been when he'd first" seen those coal eyes glaring fire at him on his first ever day at school.

But wait.

He wasn't saving him to like him; he was saving him to use him, to own him. Like Dumbledore, like everyone else. Because Snape was right, it was almost written on tablets of stone that if another wizard saved your life, it became their's until the favour was repaid.

"Weapons, Harry. Passed from hand to hand. My little saviour, born to die."

The whisper was in his mind, wrapped in the sudden upswing of his anger – the dragon's breath within before it became fire, a torrent of burning ice. He knew his next move would be violent even before it came, but his body couldn't support it. He took a swing a Snape's face. Saw those eyes, like the dark spaces between stars, widen and shine, but he couldn't make it. He tumbled and would have fallen if Snape hadn't caught him in a surprisingly gentle fashion.

Held against his teacher's chest, he could feel the beat of the man's heart and smell a faint musky sourness, like bergamot and lemons, and he realised Snape was chuckling. He rolled his head up to see dark eyes looking down at him and a smile – faint, but real, in the shallow curve of the potions master's mouth. "Such fire, Potter, for a dead lion." And he could think of no retort, nothing else to do or say but watch the man's amusement.

It sobered soon enough and their eyes stayed clashed for a moment – green grass reflected in dark water – and Snape's voice, mellifluous and darkly-perfect, rubbed like velvet over his abused mind. "Death is too easy a release for those like you and I, Potter. Now, sleep and don't wake me with your dreams again. We'll talk more in the morning."

Harry knew he should have been angry, should have been filled with rage, but with those eyes on him filled with something like compassion, and that voice telling him how he felt, that dark warm hole within him opened again and swallowed him into sleep once again.