His Fits, His Frenzy, and His Bitterness
Severus knew their prison to be sound, but that didn't stop him from testing it. The pop of Lucius disapparating echoed down the corridor almost immediately after they'd been locked in, and Severus flew to the door when he heard it. The wood was ancient but solid and sturdy. Even if he hadn't been so weak, he'd never have budged it. There was a generous gap at the corner, but it was simply a portal for rats. There was no other exit. They were deep under ground. He frantically searched for one, anyway, testing every seam he could reach. The mortar had partially flaked away from around several stones, but the walls were more than one stone thick. Besides, he'd wear his fingers to nothing by picking at it long before he managed to loosen a single one. The only real weakness in their cell was from above, where rainwater had found a way through the upper floors and widened it slowly through the years. Hastening the process would only result in a cave in. Still, being crushed to death by a fallen ceiling might be preferable to what they faced.
Having assured himself there was no escape, all urgency left him. If they could have gotten out, they would have needed to cover as much ground as possible before their captor noticed their flight. The minutes no longer mattered, though. They were trapped there until Lucius returned, whenever that might be. Severus turned his anxious attention to Harry instead.
He was no healer, but he had stocked the infirmary stores for years. Potions required a certain understanding of their practical application, and Severus liked to think he had a basic grasp of things. The young man's soft glow was encouraging. Severus didn't have to take his wrist to tell that Harry's pulse was steady, not strong but not weak or faltering. He was simply exhausted. The ordeal had left him pale, but not pale enough to indicate significant blood loss. Severus doubted Harry was bleeding internally. Though, a cursory check of the most likely bones revealed damaged ribs. Harry's breathing seemed unhindered, however. Severus heard no wetness in it. Fondling them gingerly, Severus determined they were not broken. Bruised, certainly. A vicious stain, several inches in diameter and warm to the touch, blossomed across the young man's side. Possibly his ribs were cracked, but nothing worrisome seemed to be wrong with him.
Harry was alive. Somehow, Harry was whole. Severus collapsed to a seat on the stone floor beside him in relief. He'd feared so much worse.
There was nothing to do then but wait: for the young man to wake or for Lucius to return. Severus disliked their lack of options, but perhaps it was a blessing of sorts. Their danger was not immediate. He could allow himself to breathe for a moment. And he needed to. He was shaken.
Severus had been in perilous situations before. Each moment spent in the Dark Lord's presence held the potential to be his last. Facing death was nothing to him, and he hadn't thought anything else could possibly be as nerve wracking. But that was before the Potions Master had allowed himself to care for another person more than himself.
Being forced to watch Lucius torture Harry had been one of the the most difficult things he'd ever endured...save one. And it had brought that exception sharply to mind. If the young man had been awake, Severus wasn't sure he could have endured the episode with his sanity in tact. Watching him shuddering on the floor in induced spasms had been hard enough. If it had been accompanied by Harry's anguished screams, Severus suspected he'd have come unraveled completely. He shuddered to think what he might have done, might have agreed to, for the promise that it might stop.
Severus looked down at the boy and marveled that he could feel so strongly for a person whose presence, until fairly recently, had literally made his skin crawl. The revelation that the reaction had little to do with the young man himself had been both enlightening and shackling. Severus reached over with a still trembling hand to lower Harry's jumper back over his torso from where it had become bunched under his arm as Severus had studied his ribs. He did so slowly, as if not to wake him, but really Severus was simply absorbing details before they were hidden away. He'd not taken the opportunity to appreciate them while he was examining the young man for injury. It occurred to him he could now. Nothing stopped him from pushing the fabric back instead of pulling it down. Harry wouldn't be waking soon. Severus could drink in as much of him as he wanted without consequence.
...Severus could do whatever he wanted...
The man shuddered and his stomach instantly soured. He pulled the garment quickly but gently into place. It had been an ugly, despicable thought. But though it left him feeling unclean, his mouth still watered, which only made him feel even more wretched.
After taking a moment to tamp back his shame, Severus contented himself with studying Harry's fully-clothed form. It still felt wrong somehow, but it was hard to resist. The cell was small and held no details beside the pattern of the uninterrupted stones that comprised it. There was only one other thing in the room beside Severus, and that something pulsed in radiant technicolor, made all the more vivid by their flat, lifeless, gray surroundings.
Even battered and unwell, the young man really was gorgeous. But, for the life of him, Severus couldn't be sure if the boy really was that attractive or if Severus' affection for him made him so. He shyly dared to brush the hair back from Harry's face with reverent fingertips. He straightened his cracked glasses on his nose with a small smile. Could anyone really be considered so handsome in such funny frames? But it wasn't important in the least how attractive Harry might be to others, he realized. After all, Severus still found Loraina beautiful. Though he knew it to be objectively untrue, it made her no less so in his eyes. They would both forever be paragons to Severus. Exceptional. He doubted he would ever feel similarly toward any other man. If none had ever interested him before, why should any in future? No. There would always only be Harry, and Severus almost preferred the rest of the world not see what he saw in the young man.
It was a foolish thing to ponder, though, he thought sinkingly, because it didn't matter. Regardless of what Severus felt for him or why, Harry would never return the sentiment. It had been a long while since such thoughts had wounded him. There was a multitude of reasons why the two of them could never be, but they weren't what stung. Even if all other obstacles were somehow cleared, Harry would never choose him. Severus did not possess Lupin's deceptively considerate expression or his weathered good looks. He did not have Harry's schoolboy lover's youth or golden hair and skin. Severus raised a hand self-consciously to his face, tracing a finger down his 'abnormally large nose'. He had rarely so hated its shape. Severus traced Harry's graceful bridge, as well, for comparison, and grew even more despondent. He let his fingertip continue its consideration, lightly stroking the silky swell of Harry's lips, and he tried to recall their flavor, but he tasted only bile. He knew he'd never sample them again.
Severus retreated to the opposite wall to unabashedly sulk. He tucked his hands against his sides as if the young man had been caustic to the touch, knowing the phantom sensation of the supple warmth of Harry's skin would forever be burned into his own. It was a hateful thing, this longing. There he was, locked alone in a dark room with the object of his unlikely desire. It was an attachment he'd never wanted, and now he resented it and this false opportunity. Of all the things Severus had endured, this was perhaps the most embittering. Fate mocked him. It had always, but now it abandoned all subtlety.
Curse the boy! This was all Harry's fault, Severus thought sourly. He was so easily led, so bloody predictable. Really, how could Severus possibly be so smitten with someone so dense? It defied all logic. He had never been one to be taken in my looks alone. He suspected it must be the blood. Surely he wouldn't find the young man's presence so intoxicating if his blood wasn't so perfect, if he wasn't still a virgin...
Severus gasped as that fact slowly defeated his heartfelt denial of it. He'd been so distracted by his insecurities he'd failed to appreciate what it truly meant to be locked alone with the young man for an indeterminate length of time. It was almost as if Severus had forgotten, until just that moment, what he was and how Harry's blood called to him. Suddenly, its song was almost deafening, and Severus pressed himself more firmly against the wall behind him, away from the shining temptation spread out on the floor in front of him. He'd taken his Substisanguinus, but its effects were short lived. It was only a matter of time before his thirst became unshackled to do battle with his willpower.
His earlier sense of relief evaporated. They were doomed. There simply was not enough time for matters to work out in their favor. If Lucius retrieved them before Severus' appetite became unbearable, they would die at the Dark Lord's hands. If he didn't, Harry would die at Severus'. No one knew where they might be or who captured them. How long before those at Hogwarts even noticed their absence? Or thought to look outside the grounds? Not soon enough. Perhaps Lucius had risked capture and taken Draco to St. Mungo's. But that wasn't encouraging, either. Whether Draco survived or not, Lucius would die before he confessed their exact location. Even if they knew to start searching the dungeons immediately, it would take them days to find the cell that held them. With the water pooling in the corner, that mightn't be such a dismal thought, if not for the thirst Severus harbored which the pool could not quench.
Severus gave a wry laugh that was dangerously close to a sob of despair. It was too much. To think he'd been downcast at the thought that he was being taunted with Harry's vulnerability, that his covetousness would go unsatisfied. But this was so much worse than sexual frustration and hurt feelings over his lack of appeal to the handsome youth. This was true torture, knowing the one person whom Severus had come to care for above all others would die by his hand like a sacrifice to some dark and twisted god. Eventually. Only after Severus had had ample opportunity to contemplate the horror of it. It was as if Karma was calling in his debts, and all of Severus' sins had caught up to him at once.
He wouldn't do it. Severus determined he'd die before he harmed Harry in any way. If it came to it, he'd use his fangs to open his own veins and empty himself. He had no other tools at his disposal to accomplish the deed. And so it simply became a matter of waiting. His very last staring contest with Death had commenced. He settled in for the ordeal with acceptance but not grace. His decision was not motivated by nobility. Frankly, he was disgusted by this outcome. Bitter and sickened, but lazily so. In a few days time, whether it was by Voldemort's hand or his own, he would no longer exist on this earth; and all he'd strived to accomplish in this life will have come to nothing at all.