I Surrender

Disclaimer: The marvelous J.K. Rowling all characters and settings. I own only the plot and my own typed/written words.

Summary: War is something to lose to, no matter who wins.

-------

Both are silent and watchful of each other for countless moments. There is nothing to do but relent to a pause and murmurs catching in their throats. Ginny wants to say so many things but the words won't escape from her dried lips. She turns her head and looks at him, but it's like looking into stone because he won't show his face and she can't see his eyes and there's nothing left to do but wait, just like always. His face is buried in his hands, his elbows placed on his knees, even though his legs are shaking.

Even though his legs are shaking.

"Do you think -" she starts, but doesn't finish, because he finally locks eyes with hers, and she wishes he hadn't because his eyes are as dead as hers are, like pools of blood to sink into the quarters of his eyelashes.

She feels her eyes sting and it's because dust has contracted from her eyelashes, and she tries to push them away but he gets to it first, leaning over, his gentle fingertips pushing the dust away so that her eyes settle for welling in tears in liquid form that when she blinks they vanish.

But his fingertips fumble across from her eyes and are caught on the skin of her cheekbone. He doesn't let go.

He doesn't want to let go.

She tries again, her voice steady and calm like waves of air that rush through a rainstorm, but they can't get out of the rain because the rain splatters, mingled in the dropping liquid and gets caught in it, and gets trapped in it. "Do you think any of them -" her throat catches dry and she doesn't finish because she knows if she does, she'll have to face the agony that is the serene melody of the truth. Because the truth smacks in her face like thunder that strikes through her features and brushes against her afterwards like snowflakes.

Do you think anybody survived?

Survived. Now there's a word, she muses silently, her eyes pondering over his expressionless face. Draco is as dead as she is, but he won't even show it, because to show emotion is to expose weakness and he wants to be anything but weak, he wants to do anything but cry, he wants to do anything but gasp, he wants everything to wash away so he can die.

He doesn't answer. "Sleep," he mutters, the word rolling off his tongue like a wave of an ocean that cascades against itself.

"But aren't we -" Ginny is in puzzlement, she just knows this is a blissful nightmare, of course it's a nightmare, what else could it be? Her family couldn't be dead, they couldn't be..."But aren't we already asleep?" Her voice is curious, drowning in naiveté that when Draco looks at her with his lips parted in surprise, she feels soaked in stupidity.

Aren't we already asleep?

Draco leans over and pushes the wisps of red behind the ears of her elfin-like face, and her heart takes an unexpected leap. She's not sleeping. Her eyes are open now, stinging, as if a force field of wind has just turned her over several times, and she closes them, because she doesn't want to hear the truth, the truth can't be real, it just can't, and falls against him like he's a pillow and she's his escape to unconsciousness. She falls asleep, lying in his arms.

Lying in his arms.

-------