BlackRose's Page
Chapter 9 - Questions
The end may be in sight! One more part, I think. v_v I'll try to get it out without any huge delays since this is the angsty bit and I hate leaving cliffhangers laying around.
----- Draco -----
It's a very simple game, really. When he stops screaming, I stop the pain. Cause and reaction. Very simple.
He's stronger then he credits himself for.
The beauty of the cruciatus curse, they told us once in class, is that it doesn't leave any physical traces. No blood loss. No deformity. No permanant nerve damage.
It's all in the mind, you see.
I still have to smile when I remember that. And Harry... Harry, I'm certain, remembers every word of it. He's been living it, vividly. For days, hours at a time. Stop and start. Stop and start again. He's cursed me with every word he can think of. Swore and screamed and finally, in the late hours of evening sometimes, cried. And always he asks, as though his own questions might take the place of the ones he seems to think I should be demanding of him. Over and over again, endless, trying to understand.
When we started this game, he asked for truth. I've placed the answer in front of him. It's up to him to grasp it.
He goes slack when I remove the curse, a limp and boneless puppet cut from its strings. Broken. He's so close to broken. But never quite. Not yet.
I take a glass of water to him. There's blood on his face, bright red against his lips where he's bitten them. I dip my fingers in the water and gently wash the blood away.
His eyes flutter open, huge without the framing shield of his glasses. He has to squint to focus on me. "Dr... co..."
"Shh," I whisper. "Hush, now." I dip into the water again, clear droplets hanging heavy from my fingertips, and let them fall across his cracked lips where he can lap at them with desperate intensity.
"...Why?" His voice is dry and hoarse from the screams, vocal chords tight and near ruin.
"I've told you, Harry," I repeat patiently. He always asks and I make a point to answer. "Because I can."
His lips twist, fresh blood welling up. There are tears of helpless anger sparkling on his dark lashes, every word he utters an ordeal. "Why... not... kill me?"
"That wouldn't serve any purpose," I tell him. "*This* serves a purpose."
So very angry. It's the rage that fuels him, that keeps him strong. Anger and unadulterated stubborness, his voice cracking across the infuriated cry. "Why?"
So close and not quite. So very close... but never quite right. I smile and lift the glass, tipping a swallow of the water into my mouth.
Bending, I catch his chin. He doesn't have the strength to jerk away but his lips, when I press mine to them, are held tightly shut. I twist, driving my thumb into the junction of his jaw right were the bones come together, and force his mouth open.
His breath is coming in little whining gasps as he struggles. I seal my lips to his and let the water flow, from my mouth to his and across his parched tongue. He tastes of dust and dryness and the bitter tang of pain and fear.
He tastes of innocence.
'Why?', he always asks. In the silence of his mouth beneath mine I can breath the answer - 'because you're letting me'.
He jerks away as much as he can when I let him go, and if his dry throat were not so desperate for the water I'm sure he would make a point of spitting it in my face. He flinches from my fingertips. I stroke the pad of my thumb across the scar on his forehead, feeling the warmth of it, smooth and heated. He isn't bound but he can barely raise his head, much less push me away. It frightens him. There's so much fear there.
I draw my hands back. "We're going to stop, now," I tell him quietly. "You need rest." There's so much anger in his answering glare. I smile and indulgently ruffle his hair, the strands soft to the touch. "Get some sleep."
And then I leave him, in the darkness, with the ghosts of answers howling soundless around him as he puts his head back down and lets the tears fall.
----- Harry -----
Sleeping was almost worse then waking.
The pain hounded him in dreams like something fierce and full of teeth, nipping at his heels. In sleep, he couldn't mask it or push it aside.
And in sleep he could hear the cries.
He knew them now, from night after night. Knew them as well as he did his own exhausted tears which chased him into sleep each evening. In his dreams they echoed, haunting - Hermione's sobs, ragged and muffled, and the deeper sounds of Ron's pain interspersed with violent helpless anger. And somewhere, within the dreams, he knew it for what it was - reality, the frigid touch of fear and warning. Somewhere, it was real. And somewhere, somehow, it was his fault.
"Why", he had asked, endlessly. "Why are you doing this" and "What does Voldemort want" and finally, when he had no breath left and the pain stripped away thought it was just "Why" - why not end it, why do it at all, why, why, why.
Draco's answer, in waking, was always the same. "Because I can, Harry."
"Why?" Harry screamed into the depths of his restless dreams. "WHY?"
But only the echoes of his own voice came back to him, mocking and hollow.
His dreams had no substance any more. No shape. Nothing but formless grey across which he ran, forever, haunted by cries and the ghosts of pain. Dreams were no escape any more and he slipped from them to waking and back again a dozen times a night, his mind no longer sure which was which.
He was, he thought dimly at times, waiting in the morning for Malfoy to arrive or in the evening when the other boy had left him alone once more, going to go mad. Stark, raving mad.
Lost in the darkness, too tired to run from the pain or the sound of distant cries, he wondered if he already was.
"Are what, Harry?"
"Mad," he replied automatically, only then realizing that it was another voice than his own which had spoken.
And then, without transition, Draco was there, black robes tucked neat about his feet as the other boy dropped down beside Harry to the grey ground. "Madness is a very subjective description, really," he offered mildly.
"Are you going to torture my dreams, too?" Harry asked dully, with the distant uncaring of dreams.
"How do you know you're dreaming?" Draco replied.
Harry started to gesture around to the formless grey around them, only to find that it had become stone floor and walls once more, wavering like the heat images rising from summer pavement. "I don't," he admitted at last.
"Good answer," Draco told him, smiling slightly. The expression wasn't as frightening in dreams as the mockingly cold one he wore during the day. "Very good, Harry."
Harry lay back against the stone, letting it press familiar and comforting against his shoulders. They sat in silence for awhile, time slipping away in bursts and starts each time he blinked. "Why?" he asked at last, resignedly.
"Why," Draco repeated, scoffing. "Potter.... no imagination. Why, indeed. Who?"
That wasn't the way it was supposed to go. That wasn't the answer Draco always gave. "Who?" Harry asked sharply, looking up.
Draco, in jeans and a plain black t-shirt, looking like any other English boy walking the streets of a muggle town, looked down at him with amusement. "Who, Potter. Who, what, when, where, why and how. The basics of grammar. They taught us that, you know."
Could your heart pound in a dream? Harry pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the flutter there beneath his palm. "Who?" he asked softly, slowly, the word falling strange from his lips.
Pale eyes narrowed to slits and Harry realized dimly that he could see them perfectly, even without his glasses. "Everyone," Draco answered, his voice a breath.
"What?" Harry asked desperately, grasping at the next word.
Draco's smile was enigmatic. "Truths," he replied. "And that's enough for now."
"No!" Harry's hand, when he reached out, grasped the soft fabric of a velvet dress robe. Draco paused, tugging his arm away, and for one moment their hands touched and clasped, palm to palm, warm and solid beneath Harry's fingers.
"When?" Harry whispered hoarsely.
"Who, what, and when," Draco echoed softly. When he tilted his head pale hair slid across his forehead. His hand slipped away from Harry's, reaching up, and Harry stood his ground as one slender fingertip pressed lightly across his lips. The other boy leaned in, his words exhaled on warm gusts of breath across Harry's cheek. "Tell me, Harry... if you were to wake up at a different time and in a different place... would you wake up as a different person?"
"I..." But he couldn't continue. Draco's lips closed over his own, firm and burning hot, and Harry could only gasp, his mouth opening beneath the other boy's. And then Draco's hands were on his shoulders, pushing, and somewhere there was an edge and he was falling across it, tumbling down, and there was only darkness.
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Quotes from last chapter:
Tyler Durden: You have to forget everything you know, everything you think you know -- about life, about friendship, about you and me.
Tyler Durden: You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.
Tyler Durden: You have to know that someday, you will die. Until you know that, you are useless.
-- Fight Club