Rating: R for violence.
Disclaimer: No profit is being made out of this and no copyright infringement intended.
Category: Drama, Romance
Notes: Some of you think that Harry can't get any lower than this and I should stop the sadism, but please indulge me. Consider ever lash of the whip as essential to the story... And every hardship is indeed important. After all, when it rains, it pours, right? This chappy goes out to my dearest sister, Joy Pagdilao.

SALVATION: CHAPTER TEN

He comes to me in silence. Like he always does. After the interminable torture day in and day out, he is always there to talk to me and heal my broken spirit. In the darkness of hovering death, he is my candle. And he fights the roughest winds to keep burning for me.

The whip stings my back. But I bite my lip to prevent cries of pain. It's a good thing my eyes are turned to the grimy walls instead of to my attackers. I won't be able to handle it if I see my candle of hope holding the whip stinging the life out of me. I know Draco doesn't want to do it. I can feel the hesitation with every contact of the lashing whip against my skin. He battles the guilt with every flog, every kiss of thin, coarse leather against my skin. Tears form in the corners of my eyes. Both of us are suffering. My suffering is because I know he is suffering. He doesn't want to hurt me, but choice isn't exactly a privilege for the two of us.

Goyle starts to laugh. He had wanted to do the whipping himself, but Draco insisted. It's an act, an act that we have to keep up to protect each other. But it feels so real; every lash of the whip of infernal suffering is so real. And it is Draco doing it. Somehow it had never hurt more than now. I can handle Lucius; I can handle Goyle—hell, even Voldemort, himself. But Draco? It's not so much the carnal pain, but the pain coursing through my being that we have to do this—act like puppets with our own roles to play just to keep the cruel puppeteer happy and clueless. It's starting to become a scene out of a surreal play where every act is done through necessity—called for and well rehearsed. But though the actors know how the play is to unfold, somehow they can't help but keep wishing that things can be different, that the script can be dropped in the middle of the greatest performance and just play hooky—watch how the story weaves itself without the cruel twists of a pre-arranged plot.

I want him to drop the whip. And stop playing the part. I want to just turn around to face him and say something out of my heart instead of keeping to the script.

But the graze of the coarse leather through my back brings me back to the cold, hard reality. That we are here to play the part, no matter how much we desire a different plot—a different ending. Tears cascade down my bruised cheeks, the pain searing from the whip is nothing compared to the pain in my heart because this is how things are always going to be, and I can't change it. This is my fate and this is Draco's.

There is silence and emptiness, hoarse breathing, sneering and whimpering. Is it over? "Keep hitting him, Draco! I can feel that he's about to break. If you don't want to, give me the whip; I'll do it," Goyle protests.

"No. We've done enough," a soft voice mutters from somewhere behind me. There is a faint thud of what seems to be the whip dropping to meet the moss-covered dungeon floor.

"But Draco—"

"Go to my father. I believe he needs a word with you. I'll be right behind you."

"Might as well go with your partner, Malfoy. Because you won't get anything from staying behind," I spit, half-hoping that Goyle will get a clue.

"Go," Draco sternly commands. Feet scratch against the stone floor, hesitant and doubtful. The cell bolt is yanked open with a loud clang. After Draco closes the cell door behind Goyle, he silently walks towards the wall where my forehead is propped. He plops down on the space beside me, leans his back heavily on the grime-covered wall to my left and bursts into tears without preamble.

I look at him out of the corner of my eye that is not bruised shut. I can barely see him in the dimness and the blur, but I need not see him to feel his pain. Draco's noisy sobs echo through the room, filling every available space of my prison and of my heart. I can't hold back my tears any longer. I join his soft weeping, my undamaged eye shut. "I'm sorry, Harry. I'm so, so sorry," he whispers as if to the wind. "I didn't want to do it. But I had no—"

"Sshh, you don't have to apologize. I already know. We couldn't help the circumstances. We have roles to portray and people to protect. I understand. You can keep hitting and hitting me, you know. It will still be nothing compared to the pain I know you must be feeling to do something you don't want to do. You don't want to hurt me, do you?"

"I don't. You know I don't."

"And by saying that, you've healed me already," I murmur.

"But healing you is not enough. Soon, Voldemort will grow tired of hurting you. He will kill you, and I don't know how to protect you from that," Draco half-whispers, his voice lost in the feral dimness of my prison. I bite my lip, swallowing the nasty laugh, boiling in my being. No one can protect me from my inevitable end. My mother just bought me nineteen years of borrowed time but still, this is where—this is how—I will face my end. Somehow, in the many weeks that I have witnessed the life ebbing out of me, I have come to accept it. In the end, Draco's efforts would all be in vain. And holding on to the finest thread of life—for as long as I have—would be worth nothing.

Hot tears are on my cheeks, kissing every wound that had been made and healed on my face, washing away what's left of the dying embers of my hope. "I'm tired, Draco. I'm so tired. I don't know until when I can last."

Draco stands up and unshackles my hands from the dungeon walls. Slowly, with shaking members, I face him. "I just want all this to stop. If Voldemort kills me today, I would welcome it—it's something I've always wanted in place of this interminable suffering," I mumble. I look up to meet his eyes; my other eye is swollen shut while the other appraises the sobbing young man in front of me, and tears continue to leak from it as well as from the other eye. My knees are weak with the torture. I just want to give up and beg at the top of my lungs for Voldemort to end it all for me.

Draco clutches my wrists between his body and mine and squeezes, so hard that I wince in pain. His hands are slick with grime and dried blood from my skin, but he clutches my wrists still, unfazed, and looks deep into my one eye where he can probably see what's left of my soul, of the old Harry he used to know. "You're giving up on me?" More unshed tears pool in my eyes, the one he can look through and the one hiding the greater feeling of fear. His face melts in my vision, blurs in my mind, distorted and foggy.

"It's better this way. That we both know how things are going to end. This should be the last you ever go here and risk talking to me. For all we know, it could all be over tomorrow and it's better if they don't drag your name in. You have your mother to protect and this is my life to give up." It makes little sense. But what is crystal clear is that I'm giving up—Draco should stop trying to help me because all the hope in the world probably won't be able to.

"I'm sorry I ever doubted you—that I thought you had betrayed me. But it has to stop sometime, Draco. You can't help me; you can't protect me, no one can. Ever since I was born, I have been prophesied to suffer and die in Voldemort's hands, and all the hope available in the world cannot change that fate," I choke. "I'm so, so tired."

Draco bursts into noisy tears in earnest and throws his arms around my neck to hold me close. I throw my hands around his shoulders as well. His heart is beating ever so faintly against my bare and grime-blackened chest, and hot liquid is pelting on the shoulder where his chin is softly propped. He is crying as well, pouring the indescribable suffering that must be eating him just as my own personal pain is eating me.

If this is the last contact I will ever have with a human being who cares about me, I am glad it's Draco—my source of hope that kept me fighting for as long as I have.

"You're my hope. I get more hope from you than you from me, Harry. Do you know that? It's the fact that you keep on fighting that makes me get through my own wretched existence. Without you, I'm as good as dead. I can't let you lose hope. I can't! Just—just hang in there. For me, Harry, please. Don't give up. The Resistance will come for you. They have resisted Voldemort's attacks recently and got themselves some senior Death Eaters as hostages to get to you, to where you're hidden. Don't lose hope, please. If I have to stay here with you every night from now until you get rescued to keep the flame of hope burning in you, I will. I don't care if my father suspects me. I don't care if Voldemort kills me—I'm always going to be here for you. I'd lay down my life in exchange for yours if I have to. Because you mean more to me than you know, Harry. I lo—"

I embrace him more fiercely, cutting him off. What would I have become without you, Draco? How could I have survived for as long as I have without you?

Warm hands travel down my spine, caressing my back marred with crisscrossing wounds of tortures past. Just the touch of his finger is enough to heal me, to remind me that loss of hope had never stopped me before, and so it shouldn't now. Just the touch of his chin on my shoulder is more than enough for me to hang in here, fighting for my life and for the lives of many others I am yet to avenge.

Draco breaks free from the embrace but presses close to me, and kisses the lightning bolt-shaped scar on my forehead, almost obscured by new and deeper wounds since my imprisonment. His breath is comfortably hot on my forehead, and his hands are tightly clasped around my forearms. It feels so rejuvenating as if he is breathing new life into me, as if he is sharing what's left of his own life with me.

I start to make a vow: I'm not going to let Draco down. The feeble light of strength from the core of my soul again defeats my momentary loss of hope.

He murmurs something I don't quite catch but I don't ask him to repeat it. The treble of his voice already speaks volumes anyway.

His lips touch my closed and swollen eye, and I close my other eye as if by instinct. Just your touch, Draco. Just your touch—and I am alive again, fighting like I've never fought before.

"They're coming for you. I can feel it. The capture of the three senior Death Eaters that my father and Voldemort were discussing heatedly last night is the start of it. What I should do now is to keep you alive, long enough for them to find you. And what you should do is wait and trust me."

I can feel that he doesn't want to leave me, but he extricates himself from touching me and walks slowly to the bolted door, careful to hide his eyes brimming with mixed emotions. We might be kidding ourselves, of course. It is also possible that the Resistance never believed the letter Draco sent before that told them that I was Voldemort's prisoner, and the capture of the senior Death Eaters was just a coincidence, but I shun it away. "Draco?"

He freezes and hastily wipes his face before facing me again with a radiant smile given that his cheeks are lined with tearstains. "Shouldn't you tie me up?" His eyes soften and he walks back to me, weakly leaning on the mossy dungeon wall, painted with dried blood

Waving his wand, he refastens my wrists to the rusty manacles on the wall. His sad eyes are full of fear but also burn with unanswered prayers that somehow, everything will right themselves in the end.

"I'll be back later and—" There is something else he wants to tell me, but he hesitates. There is raw emotion in his eyes that is unfathomable, inscrutable. The hesitation makes my faint heart beat a little faster. The pain in every inch of my battered body is momentarily forgotten as I stand there, drinking in the emotions I can't quite understand in Draco's hesitant voice, in his tone that is holding something back. Draco just tilts my chin to look into my only open eye, bites his lower lip hard, probably stifling more tears and says something that would never, ever be erased from my mind probably until the day I die.

"—And always remember, if it boils down to a choice between your life and mine, I'll give my life for you. That's how much you mean to me, Harry. You mean more to me than you can imagine—in this life and in the next."

And so will I, Draco. So will I.

-emeraldine-