Warning: This chapter contains graphic scenes of brutality, abuse, torture, and rape. If this is a problem for you, don't read anything between the Warning page breaks.
Chapter Four: A Fear-Stalked Silence
Lily
"I think I've known Scorpius, somehow, from the time I was six or seven, although I never met him until I was 10. His father, Draco Malfoy, came to Papa one day. I don't know why.
"I was playing by the door, making the dolls Mother had Transfigured fly. He was in the distance, and I didn't see him at first. My magic was released, and it was spinning and whirling and expanding all around me. I still didn't have complete control over it at that point. I was only a child, but Mother and Papa had already taught me I could never, never, have all my magic out around strangers. The strangers would try to take me away from them, they said, try to take me away and steal my magic and raise something evil, like the thing that Papa had had to fight.
"I believed them. I had seen cruelty in strangers, and Albus and James had both been taught the same thing. They'd even had some experience with it. They told me the same thing, especially Albus, because he always worried about me.
"I didn't see him coming though, not until he was close enough to feel the waves of magic. I… He scared me, and I hit him in the face with a doll on accident to try and keep him from seeing me. It just made him angry. He grabbed my shoulder in a vice grip, and he had his wand out of his cane and pointed at me before I had a chance to run two steps.
"He terrified me, but I couldn't look away from those silver eyes. His magic was aggressive, trying to push mine away, and he was growling something about 'the Dark Lord's mark on me'. I didn't learn until I was older that he was talking about the imprint left on my dad's magic, and then passed down to me. It's unusual for magic to share imprints of others through the bloodline, but my dad did something almost cataclysmic, and cataclysm leaves it's mark.
"Mr. Malfoy held me like that for a few seconds, and I started crying, and this… this shift took place, and suddenly his eyes looked like Papa's or Albus'. He didn't look mad anymore, he just looked like he wanted to keep me safe. He set me down, and he smoothed my hair down, and he told me not to cry. He handed me back my doll, and he apologized, and then he went into the house to meet with Papa for something. I didn't see him leave, but I knew he did, because the house stopped feeling like strange magic before I went to bed.
"That look in his eyes… it's how Scorpius looked at me before the… before it happened. He used to get so protective of me, tried to keep me from tripping or getting parchment cuts or dripping ink on myself when I got caught up in reading… I first met Scorpius in his father's eyes."
I turned over from my side, laying on my back and staring and the blue canopy, connecting the silver stars on it with my eyes to try and keep focused when I just wanted to cry again. I had to keep talking. If I ever stopped, it felt like I would never start again.
"Mr. Malfoy came back a few times, but he never came near me again. I knew he didn't like my magic, but Papa had scared him off of me after he saw the bruise on my shoulder. I never forgot that look though, and after that my favorite color was the silver of his eyes.
"I officially met Scorpius on Platform 9 ¾ when I went to school a year early. I'd been in a terrible row with Papa because he didn't want me to go a year early, though I knew that I could handle it. It was right after my magic had exploded out of me, when I touched the signet ring Papa had from Grandpapa. He'd found out I was the heir of my family's magic, even though I was the youngest and a girl. Papa didn't want me to go because he thought it was too dangerous and he didn't want me to be teased for being so small, and he didn't think I was ready, and he thought I needed more time to regain my control. All I could hear was 'you aren't old enough, or man enough, or big enough, or tough enough, or smart enough, and above all, you don't have enough willpower to keep yourself reigned in'. I was so mad, and I yelled at him, even though I'd never yelled at him before. I used the Floo for the first time that day, to get to King's Cross Station and onto the train, because Mother hadn't acknowledged me in years, and Papa was so angry. I got separated from the people I'd followed through the wall, and I couldn't see over anyone, and I couldn't get up high enough to see which way was which. I was so small when I was ten, and the crowds were bumping me around, and I was scared. And then I caught just the barest flash of my favorite silver color, and I followed it because it was the only thing I recognized. They were his eyes, those same exact eyes that I'd seen years ago, except they were in a younger person.
"Scorpius had been dropped off, as 'it wasn't appropriate for a Malfoy to be seen clinging to his parents, or the parents to be hovering over the child'. He was about to get onto the train when…" I laughed at how ridiculous this was, "Well, when I grabbed him and slung my arms around his waist and held on for the life of me. I dropped my trunk right in front of his feet, and he tripped and fell and it was horrible. But he shifted while he was falling so that he didn't fall on me, and he landed right on his bum in the gap between the platform and the train, and he nearly slipped through. He pushed me out of the way, and he managed to get out of there with a bit of a struggle.
"He didn't even stop to look at me when he got up. He pushed me back as hard as he could, and even though I was small, he was big, and it was a lot of force. I landed right flat on my back and he just walked away…
"And I did what any respectable young lady would do at that point. I stood up, and I took off my shoe, and I threw it at his head, and then I went about dusting off my brand new robes, because they were dirty and I was angry and crying and now my shoe was gone.
"But it wasn't gone, because as soon as I'd finished getting the dust off my bum and hem, he was right there in front of me. He was close as could be, and like I said, he was big. Nearly twice my height at the time. He put my shoe back on for me, and he set my trunk down by my feet, and he kissed the little cut on the palm of my hand that I hadn't seen before.
"And then he was gone, and I didn't see him for the rest of my first year.
"I made friends of course, even though I was a year younger and tiny. I met you Rose, and we got to be fast friends, and then Raven found me, and Aleksander and Dimitri. It was a good year, but he puzzled me the entire time. I knew he had to be Mr. Malfoy's son, because he just looked too much like him to be anything else. But I could never find him in Ravenclaw or Gryffindor. With manners like that, and that gallantry, he had to be either a reckless, charming Gryffindor, or a polite Ravenclaw. I never thought to look below the Towers. If I'd known he was in Slytherin… But we didn't have any classes with them, all year.
"And then, in second year, I had all my classes with Slytherin. Every single one of them. And in every single one, he was there, though he never looked at me, and he never talked to me. I was still tiny then. I wouldn't hit my growth spurt until that summer. The other kids teased me, called me all sorts of names, kicked me and pretended they hadn't seen me… but it got less and less, and I caught him glaring at the others every so often. I knew he'd done something, but I couldn't understand why he wouldn't just talk to me.
"But that year passed too, and nothing happened. He was just the silent, shining son of Mr. Malfoy with those silver eyes and platinum hair. He confused me. But he was an interesting puzzle, and I played the little game of deciphering him so I'd have something I could do. Something to think about when my classes bored me to tears.
"And then it was third year, and I'd grown so much, and I was almost as big as the boys. There was Quidditch, and there were new classes, harder classes that I could actually be made to think in, and there was Hogsmeade, and I forgot about my befuddling silver knight. Scorpius faded between the endless essays and practices and shopping trips and excitement. I dropped the puzzle I'd found in him and it didn't even hurt to let it go.
"But that was the year he found me."
I rolled over again, until I could rest my head on the pillows, trying to assure myself I was stable for what came next.
"I remember that game against Slytherin, to get into finals, in third year. I was center Chaser. We were all of two goals away from putting it out of Slytherin's reach even with the Snitch, and I had the Quaffle to score. It was the perfect shot, and I was weaving and diving and spinning and evading like mad. Everything was so clear, and the keeper was off on the other side of the hoops because the distraction was actually working and Mary Bones was flying spectacularly.
"But then the bludger came. It was a dirty shot. The Beater handed his club off to one of their Chasers. Of course, Hooch couldn't see him, because the tangle was insane.
"It hit me square in the back of the skull as I was shooting up out of the crush. I was out in a second, so they say, falling from 300 feet in the air. No one saw me on the field. Not the Beaters, not the Chasers, not even Albus. He was racing with Scorpius for the Snitch, and Slytherin would still be ten points up if they caught the Snitch now. No one saw me falling except the people in the stands, or so they told me.
"The Snitch was down low, not 10 feet off the ground. They were neck in neck, and he could have gotten it if it hadn't jumped straight up. Albus and Scorpius shot up after it, and I fell right past them. Albus didn't even notice. He was too focused. Scorpius had the Snitch though. Just an inch more and he would have gotten it.
"He didn't. He flipped over on his broom, and he dove straight towards the ground. He raced that bloody broom with all the strength he had, straight at the ground.
"He was the only one who saw me falling. He gave up the Snitch to catch me. I might have survived the fall. Someone probably would have noticed in time. But he dove straight for the ground, and he caught me not 10 feet from the the grass of the pitch, right by the wall. He fell off his broom, and I have no idea how he did it, but he must have wrapped himself around me to protect me. We fell through the rafters in the pit between the stands and the fields, and he got banged up as hell.
"Broken ribs, they said when he got to the hospital wing. A broken wrist, ankle, finger, three fractured vertebrae, and cuts and bruises all over him from the fifty foot fall through the rafters. They put me on the bed next to him. I woke up in another 10 minutes. He didn't wake up for three days.
"I stayed with him all three days. I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep… nothing. I had no idea why, but it centered on him. He fascinated me, how he could come after me when he didn't know me. He wasn't beautiful, he wasn't interesting or funny or conversant at that point. For all I knew, when he woke up, he'd be a vegetable. But I couldn't leave him.
"When he woke up, he didn't say a word to me, and I didn't say a word to him outside of a heartfelt 'thank you'. And we didn't talk for the rest of the year. I tried to send him an owl over summer, but I never got a response back.
"And in fourth year, there was the Triwizard tournament, and Scorpius had to compete even though he was too young. I tried to talk to him for the first time, to warn him about the first task. The Slytherins wouldn't let me near him. 'What could the Lady Ravenclaw want with one of the snakes? Go play with your riddles little girl. Scorpius Malfoy has no need for children'. I didn't get to him in time to be much help, but I did manage to warn him on the walk down to the Champion's tent.
"He didn't believe that they'd have to fight their way through a nundu. The Headmistress wouldn't sentence them to death like that. No one had every managed to slay a nundu with less than a hundred wizards. 'Impossible,' he'd said, 'Nundus are nearly impossible to kill, and they're deadly to anything that crosses their paths. There's no way they'd ever risk bringing one to Hogwarts, much less pit us against them. Don't be ridiculous.'
"Normally, that wouldn't bother me, but with him, I learned that every insult, every barb, everything is more. When it's something good, it makes me fly. When it's bad, it kills me slowly; worse yet, there's nothing I can do about it. For as long as I live, he'll affect me like that.
"But that's not what I'm on about right now is it? No, of course not. The depressing parts come later." I laughed, and it was hollow and thin and wrong. There was no happiness in it.
"Then they heard the nundu roar. They called the champions out, and there it was."
Silence rang throughout the room as we all remembered the battle. The roars, the screams, the overwhelming stench of desperation and fear washed over us all again. The memories blinded us all to the present, and the sheer terror of the day threatened to steal our breathe away forever.
"He almost died," I said, and that murmur sounded like the shattering of glass. "So many times, he almost died, and each and every time, it felt like my heart stopped and bled for him. I didn't know why. He'd made no promises, shared nothing with me. We'd barely ever spoken to each other, and yet...
"And yet, every time he was close to death, I felt like I would die with him. Like if his soul left, mine would follow. I couldn't name what it was then. But it was something that went deeper than blood and bone and everything. Something deeper than love.
"He came out bloody, bruised, broken, drained of magic and so many other things. They took him to the hospital wing, and he stayed there for two whole weeks. He would only let one person see him. He'd only let me in.
"I helped him with figuring out the second task, up until the time that the Headmistress took me and gave me the poisoned batch of the Draught of Living Death. I only figured out, after he saved me, that I was taken because I meant the most to him. Scorpius told me, after he'd administered the antidote - 12 minutes after the point when it should have killed me mind you - that after the entire mess was over, after the challenges were won and everything was healed, that he had something he needed to tell me, something that would change everything.
"And then there was the race through the castle, the hunt for the Cup through the rooms filled with every horrible, evil thing. Boggarts and Dementors, Acromantula and Dragons, creatures I can't even name. They started in the dungeons, and the Cup was on the roof of the Astronomy Tower. He battled through all of it, and he managed to win it.
"And then he fell from the top of the Astronomy Tower. He'd lost over 2 liters of blood, and his core was sapped of magic. He'd been battling for seven hours, and he'd been through hell and worse in that castle. His mind, his body... everything was close enough to death for there to be no difference.
"He fell, and I watched him, and all I could think was - No. I wouldn't let him die. I refused to let him die.
"The fall from the top of the Tower is over 300 feet. It takes a long time to fall that far, but it didn't seem like long enough. I could swear, before I caught him, that he was inches away from the ground. It was far enough away in reality, but the fear was ridiculous. I'd thought I'd lost him before I'd even had him. Fear changes things. It shifts perspectives and it clouds judgements. I hate fear.
"I don't know how it happened exactly. Some people say I flew, some say it was Apparation into midair, and others think I'd somehow charmed my broom invisible. But it wasn't that. It was my magic, focused on a single thing, one purpose, so wholly that nothing stood in my way.
"It was terrifying and I'd do it a thousand times over to save Scorpius again. But the feeling of all my magic, centering and shifting around one thing, focused so harshly that there was no escape - it's the worst feeling I've ever had, and I still have night terrors and cold-sweats about it. I hate my magic. It's tainted and evil, and it stems from the vilest creature to ever walk this earth. And I can feel a piece of that aberration, of Voldemort, trying to devour me every time my magic rears it's ugly head from the dark place I manage to hide it in. It sickens me.
"Is it wrong that I'd give into it? That I'd give into the Dark, just to save one man? It's monstrous. It's evil. I'd damn everything just for him. What does that make me?
"But then, what does it matter what I am? It means bloody nothing anymore. I have to try to fix the damage he's done. I'm his after all. He's the only one who'd take me now.
"But I caught him. I saved him, and I broke the one rule my parents had drilled into me since I was born. My magic was out and swirling and flying, and everyone could see it dance and destroy, and everyone knew I was tainted. I just wanted to curl up and die from the looks I would get. But I didn't regret a thing. I didn't regret saving Scorpius for a single second.
"Over summer, we exchanged letters every day. We snuck out through the Floo to see each other when we could, lied to our parents about where we were going so we could be together. Before we'd left, we'd bought a pair of charmed mirrors so that we could talk and see each other. And while he was reserved because his parents supervised him constantly, and I... well, because I'm not a fantastic conversationalist, we got to know each other better than I think I've known anyone before. I told him about my magic, and he told me about the side effects of being raised in a house wrought with Dark magic when he's so susceptible to it, and I told him about the Parseltongue, and he told me about his little brother Medusos, and I taught him Parseltongue, and he somehow managed to learn it because of his family's close connection to Voldemort, and he talked me down from my rages and up from my depression and... we fell in love.
"And then last year, when the school year came, we got together. I remember threatening people out of my way at wandpoint to get into his compartment on the train. We spent the entire ride talking and staring and touching each other. It was sweet and chaste and innocent, and he just kept me in his arms the entire train ride, like it was the most natural, proper thing in the world to do. He didn't do anything bold, didn't try to molest me. He just sat with his back against the door and held me while we looked out the window at the countryside, and we talked.
"Of course, once we got into the carriages to go up to the castle, with closed doors and covered windows and no possible interruptions, it turned into a right snog that lasted the entire way to the castle. But I started that, not him. He was always a perfect gentleman, unless I started something... bold.
"The entire year was bliss. It was perfect and wonderful, filled with laughter and joy and everything I'd ever hoped for, on the rare occasions when I imagined what it would be like to be in love. Things were working out, and I finally felt like I didn't have to be afraid of breaking the rules or disappointing my family, or hiding my magic, or getting the best grades, or protecting everyone. The world wasn't about responsibilities and duties and working and trying and achieving anymore. It was about getting by and making a place for Scorpius and myself. We could just tell that we were each other's futures. You always said, Raven, that there was a touch of destiny about us.
"And then he started talking about Lord Sin.
"At first, I thought it was like a child's ghost story, meant to scare and entertain at the same time. But he believed it, and he said that his left arm burned in time with his pulse. After we first discovered the Room of Requirement and we started spending nights together, I'd see red, irritated scratches on his left arm in the shape of a skull and a snake. I thought he was scratching the Dark Mark on himself to try and make the story more real. It seemed like he was becoming obsessed, like it was some sort of bloody game to him. He was getting stranger and stranger, more distant and I... I was scared. I thought I was losing him, to someone else, to himself, to his strange fascination with that abominable story about 'another darkness rising in the world'. I talked to him about it, fought with him, tried to get him to stop, and all he could go on about was blood and his connection to this abhorrent idea of 'Lord Sin'.
"I thought it was finally over that night three weeks after Christmas. He came into the Room of Requirement, and he was so focused on me. He didn't talk about the mark or the blood or the stupid fake Lord once. It was like the time on the train. We sat, and he held me, and we talked.
"I said 'I'm so glad to have you back. You're finally the Scorpius Malfoy I know again'. It was like a flip switched in him.
"He shifted so fast. I barely had time to realize something had changed before he slammed my head down into the floor. He held me down by the neck and squeezed the air out of my lungs. I tried to get to my wand, but the second it was in my hand, it was gone again. I heard a sickening snap of wood, and then he threw the pieces of it across the room. He told me to...
Warning
{... "Scream, bitch, or I'll kill you. Scream for me." He bashed my head into the floor again and again, until I couldn't see through the blood in my eyes, and my brain was too scrambled to know how to do anything more than breathe.
"I - Said - SCREAM BITCH!" He punched me in the face hard enough to break bone, straddling my thighs so I couldn't get away. The pain was incomprehensible, and I couldn't catch my breath. Couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't move as my bones snapped and blood spurted.
He hit me again and again in the face and throat. He strangled me until I was on the verge of passing out, and then he'd let me breathe only to start again.
And somehow, the sight of me turning blue and nearly unconscious, choked and helpless did something for him, and the attack turned from a beating into rape. He flipped me over, and I saw a knife glint in his hand just before he sliced my robes off of me, piece by piece, until all my skin was exposed. I was naked and alone and hurting and terrified. He just kept hitting me.
"You like that, don't you?" he said as he drew the knife across the tops of my breasts. "You like it when I hurt you, don't you slut? You love pain. Well, see how this feels bitch!"
He wrapped a hand around my throat, and for a second it was gentle, almost tender. And then the knife was there, drawing a line across my throat. There was an unimaginable pain, a tearing, wrenching agony, but more than that was the terror of being completely unprotected and vulnerable to a monster. I could feel the power he held over me. He could kill me, and no one would know. No one knew where I was, nor where he was. I could disappear, and he'd be gone before they ever found me.
His hand tightened until it was near crushing my throat, and his hand squelched in my blood as it bubbled up around his fingers, red and wrong. My vision tunneled, the edges fading from black to gray, and all I could think was, What did I do? What did I do wrong?
I clawed at his hands, tried to get away, kicked him and punched him and flailed and squirmed. He held me there until I passed out, slicing my skin all the while.
When I woke again, I was tied in the center of the room, hanging from the ceiling, toes barely touching the ground. He had the knife in one hand and a whip in the other.
"Do you like pain, slut?" He asked. I tried to cry or scream for help, anything, though my throat was raw and bleeding. It did nothing. He'd gagged me, and what little sound I could make could only be heard by me.
"ANSWER ME BITCH!" he roared, and when no sound came from me, he swung the whip across the top of my breasts, right over the cut he'd made, slicing through my skin and taking pieces with it. The whip was barbed, and it tore flesh from bone. The pain shot through me, a sharp agony that didn't even warrant a scream. There were too many wounds for it to make any difference.
His shirt came off then, though I only realized because I could see the shadow of something on his left forearm, just before the whip cracked down across my back. Blood ran in rivulets down my body, and I almost welcomed it. Maybe if I died, the pain would end.
The whip tore off my skin again and again as things blurred together. There was an endless sea of torture, and I was in the middle of it, drowning and unable to breathe. The pain was blinding, suffocating, all-encompassing, and yet my thoughts were clear enough to know what he was doing. I knew I was nearing the brink of what I could take, that my mind was breaking, because the pain shifted to pleasure sometimes, and everything he did to me started to seem right.
It was a victimization process. Hurt me, break me, and make me a puppet for him to use. A slave for him. He kept talking, bringing up everything I'd ever done wrong, every mistake, and it blurred and blended with the torment of everything else.
This is my fault, I thought, if I'd just done better...
Eventually it was all a single moment and a lifetime, everything the same. The pain, the whips and the cuts and the burns... Agony became my world, and that was right and proper because I'd done something wrong and this was punishment. Some part of me thought that was a lie, that I'd broken under the hours of torture, but the larger part of my mind knew that this was the proper course of things.
Then things were burning me, and it was the same and yet different again. There was more, and I screamed every time something broke or bled. When he unchained me, I noticed, but only because the hot lances of agony were offset by the bitterly cold floor.}
I was crying again, dying anew with the memories, and it felt like I'd been weeping for a lifetime. I'd thought I'd healed and gotten over this, but it was all still there, buried in the darkness with my magic and my anger and my less desirable half.
It's all a lie, I thought, and it rang true to every part of me. Everything I am... It's all a lie. I'm still that scared little girl with no control being beaten and raped by the person she loved. It's all still there.
"The one thing I remember so wretchedly clearly is the rape."
The tears fell, and the anger rose, and the memories sucked me in again.
{The chains released me from the ceiling, but they only latched onto the floor. There was pain again, but what was more pain at this point? My world was pain. It meant nothing.
There was a rustling sound, and somehow I knew it was the rest of his clothing coming off.
And then he was behind me, forcing my head down and my hips up, and every single time he'd made love to me came back to my mind.
My magic flared out around me, dark and evil and protective, and it made the image of the room shift and mutilate itself. It did nothing to stop him, just warped my mind so that, maybe, just maybe, I wouldn't break. I screamed and I fought as all the good memories, every single feeling I'd had shattered and reshaped into the sharpest kind of hatred. I could see almost nothing through tears and a blinding sense of loathing for this... thing that was on me and around me and in me. Every one of his movements, the slightest shift to the hardest thrust was agony, and each separate nerve that sensation ran along rebelled against it. My mind tried to shut down, tried to save what little was left of my sanity, but I felt and saw and knew everything that happened to me. I knew every bloody detail of what he did to me.
He licked at my blood, my sweat and my tears. He ran his hands over ever inch of my skin, pressed into every bruise and cut, and relished my screams. He pounded into me, and I could feel my body tearing, things ripping that there was no name for.
He flipped me and contorted me around, forced my body to respond, and the entire time my mind rebelled. He whispered to me, things he had said all the times we'd been together before.
"You're so beautiful," he crooned, just before he wrenched my head back by my hair and bit into my breast hard enough to break skin and muscle and draw a gush of blood.
"You're so bloody good," he moaned while he forced himself down my throat and held me there until I passed out.
It didn't matter. He revived me and continued.
"I love you Lily," he said, kicking me in the ribs. I heard something crack and I screamed hard enough to curdle my own blood. " I love you –" he punched my face as he said the words again and again, blood spewing everywhere as he broke my nose, cut my skin, bruised me and made me beg for him to stop. "I love you – so – fucking – much!" With every word, he beat me closer to unconsciousness – and to death.
He carved his name into my skin then. I remember that. He carved "Scorpius" into my back, down my spine. He told me he loved me again and again while he did it, that everyone would know what he'd done to me, know that I was his now, his bitch, his whore, his slut, his slave... all his.
All I could feel was a sense of violation and a burning, choking anger and an all-consuming fear.
All I could taste was tainted blood and throbbing hate and the rancid taste of him.
All I could see was the blood vessels twisted wretchedly into the mark on his arm and the dull glaze of his once bright quicksilver eyes and the blood dripping and running down my skin.}
"It took hours, and every second seemed like a year. The degradation, the humiliation, the fear and the pain and the sheer betrayal of it all blended and roiled in the pit of my stomach. But the final act, that's what finally broke me. And I was broken, at the end of it. If he'd just stopped there, I could have stayed intact.
"He pulled me up by my hair, and he held me there. He forced my hands onto his prick, and he forced me to wank him off. He came all over my body. He wrenched my mouth open, and he shoved it down my throat until gagged, and then he pissed straight into me.
Warning
"And then he just dropped me, and moaned for the last time, and fell straight on top of me. He was huge, even though I'd grown from the tiny thing I'd been before. He pressed into every wound, every broken bone, every cut. I screamed again, but it meant nothing.
"He fell asleep on top of me, and I lay there, unmoving and unseeing and altogether broken, for hours, until the sun rose. He could have done anything to me, and I wouldn't have fought. I was helpless and hurting, dirty and sick and disgusting, and it was my fault. I'd brought it on myself.
"When he woke up... I ran as soon as I could. He trapped me with those wretched snakes, those bloody black pythons he loves so much. He made me listen, blamed it on Lord Sin and the Imperius curse, told me that it wasn't his fault and he would never hurt me.
"I was blind with terror by then. The sound of his voice, the look in his eyes, the way he moved - all of it tormented me.
"He let me go, and my magic pulsed through me. I ran with a speed I'd never known, despite the broken bones, the bleeding and trauma and exhaustion. I ran to my room, to my bed. to the only place I had warded and protected against attack. I went in, and I locked my curtains shut and rose what wards I could. And then I was unconscious for two whole days.
"I dreamed during those days, and they were dreams of the attack all over again. All of it, the cuts, the bruises, the burns, the marks, the bites, the broken bones, even the rape... Somehow, I'd brought it on myself. I'd done something horrible to him, something unforgivable and I still don't even know what I did wrong. I hate him, so much, and I'm so afraid of him. I want to hide every time he looks at me. I'm ashamed of what I did with him, of what I let happen... and it's all my fault."
There was silence for an eternity after I finished. My tears fell, and sobs wracked my body, but I kept them in and didn't make a sound. I'd done my screaming and crying out or a lifetime with him in that room. I would never do it again.
The bed shifted, and something in the tension of the room changed. It felt menacing and dangerous, and it brought back rushes of the feelings I'd just given life and free reign to again. I could feel an overpowering, deadly intent in the room, and it made me cower again. I heard the rustle of cloth, and it threw me back to the sound of clothes dropping to the floor just before -
"I'll kill him," said Rose. "I'll kill him right now." She was out the door and gone before either of us could stop her.
She was serious, and we all knew it. Raven raced out after her, and it struck me that they were like yin and yang, perfectly balanced, one hot-tempered and the other cool headed. And in my emotionally tattered state, my mind reeling, left alone and comfortless, this struck me as funny.
I laughed. I laughed like a madwoman, and tears rolled down my cheeks. The sound of it was harsh, but everything about it was perfect and fitting and proper, because I was like a broken doll, like his broken doll, and this confusion and torment fit with that. As the pain of tears and the bliss of laughter, the mirth and the sorrow mixed together, all I could think was that I was a coward, because I'd been hiding, and never healing. I'd stuffed this entire ordeal, all the feelings and insecurity and anger down into the dark place, with my magic and my dark side and my doubts and fears and problems.
I laughed as I sobbed, and I wept as I laughed. I went mad as I rationalized, and all of the conflicts and riddles of what was happening to me meshed together until there was no air left to breathe. I choked on the feelings, even though I knew it was impossible. I laughed and I cried myself into hyperventilation, and when I'd finally used up all the air, I passed out and finally slept in the comfortless, wretched softness of my cold, lonely bed.
The entire night, all I could dream of was the perverse desire to sleep in Scorpius's arms again, because surely, anything would be better than the demons I'd pulled out of myself.
Anything was better than this thrice damned, endless pain.
Author's Note
Next: Chapter 5: The Green Light's Flare
