When the Butterflies Fly Home

Draconis walked to the gazebo and looked down guiltily and finally muttered, "I'm sorry…"

"For what!? Assaulting me! Scarring me for life!" Hermione shrieked.

"What! I did not assault you! You liked it just as much as I, another few seconds and I'd have had you begging!" Draconis huffed, male pride clearly injured. "You know Hermione you can't always act like the injured party, when you run away or when you defy me; even I get punished for your insubordination."

"Why would you get punished?" Hermione scoffed.

"Because you're my slave! My responsibility! And if I can't deal with you, they'll give you to someone else and right now I have half a mind to let them!" Draconis said furiously

"Oh…" Hermione said, pressing her fingers against her lips, "Oh… I was unaware…"

"Yes, well you know now…" he said softly and the couple lapsed into silence, where Hermione took the time study him. He had a face that showed how hard military life had been, not the scars alone but something in his eyes, the almost unnatural alertness. She had never seen him completely relax, he was like a caged animal, always looking for something or someone to releases his pent up aggression on.

She hesitated before breaking the silence, "That day in the morning when I saw you training…" she began, watching him stiffen, "The scar on your back… how old is it?"

Draconis turned towards her with unreadable silver eyes, "I got it while defending my mother, while my father was in one of his drunken rages. He picked up one of those ornamental swords that hung on his house walls and slashed around like the raving insane creature he is and he nearly sliced my back in half."

Hermione wished she had never asked … "You loved your mother very much then." She said lamely

"I adored her…" he said in a cold voice, "She was a sick woman; being married to my father for so many years had taken their toll on her body, she was a gentle woman from a small merchant family that's why my father thought he could bully her, I didn't even realize he was beating her till I was fifteen, she would always make excuses, saying she was clumsy. But one day in the night I was going to get some water and I heard her scream, I have never heard her scream before because my parents rooms were in the opposite side of the house, completely cut off from my own wing, so I went and stood outside the door and saw what he was doing to her. I was just fifteen! I was so scared but when my father found out that I knew what he was doing to mother, he stopped bothering to hide it, he would beat her in front of me … I was stronger than him, most of the time I managed to subdue him until he was sober… when he was sober he was exactly the man my mother had fallen in love with, he would apologize and kiss her; tell her that he would never drink again and my mother believed him because she was so in love with him, so desperate to cling to even a shred of his old self. Eventually he damaged some part of her brain while he was beating her one night… the night I wasn't there. He drove her to insanity and when I was seventeen he had, had enough of her. So he picked up the sword and sliced through my back… while I lay bleeding he cut of her head in one swoop. I saw it all…" he said looking of into the distance, his tone cold.

Hermione suppressed a shiver, trying to imagine what it must have been like for a seventeen year old boy to witness murder in cold blood… the murder of his own mother at the hands of his father, "My back was bandaged…" he continued, in the same monotone, "And then a few of my possession were packed and I was thrown out of the house and left to die, Blaise found me … he and Teo were living in an underground shelter for criminals, they nursed me back to health the best they could, but the filthy living conditions and the fever all resulted in my wounds festering, becoming putrid. So they stole… medicine and bandages whatever they could get their hands on because my father refused to acknowledge me after I was thrown out of the house; another friend of ours Alexander helped until he was killed by the centurions in a raid, after that we joined the army."

"I…I…I…I'm sorry, I had no idea." Hermione said, struggling for words, there were none to describe the brutality he had experienced. So she just laid a hand on his arm.

Draconis had achieved at least part of what he had hoped, by telling her his story he made her see that she wasn't the only one who had suffered in life and this constant defiance was useless.

…

"Hello…" said Teo, looking at the stiff figure of the girl shrouded in darkness.

"My lord." Greeted Noor with as much warmth as she could muster.

Teo scoffed good naturedly, "You can call me Teo, especially after the fright I gave you today."

Noor grinned shyly and moved a bit so that he could sit down near her.

"I am sorry, but injuries like these…. permanent ones are sort of a sore spot for me." He said ruefully pointing towards his eye.

"What happened to you?" Noor blurted out.

"When me and Draconis and Blaise were eighteen summers past we decided to join the army, well there was this training officer called Vitus, he was a brute of a man, a foul, loathsome creature with no mercy, a penchant for destruction and a hearty appetite for violence no matter where it come from. He used to make us recruits fight each other each night for his amusement, one day when I said no to fighting Draconis because his scar was still healing, he got so furious that someone was defying him that he came at me with a sword, the last thing I remember is feeling this searing pain in my eye and waking up and not being able to see out of it. Blaise killed him before he could do more damage, it wasn't hard … he was a heavy drinker and rather slow." Teo said with a shrug of his broad shoulders, "So what happened to you?" he asked her.

Noor gave him a withering look, "I'd rather not talk about it."

"You should… if you do eventually it gets better." Teo explained laying a hand on her shoulder.

Noor just shook her head.

"Alright maybe not now… but someday soon you're going to tell me." He said, getting up and dusting the dirt of his clothes and offering her a hand, "Come now, let's go search for Draconis and the other girl; your friend… otherwise I'm afraid they'll be at each other's throats." Teo said with a smirk.

"You noticed that too." Noor giggled, "They do seem to hate each other rather unnecessarily."

"The mysterious laws of attraction." Laughed Teo.

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