AN) This fic shall split into two versions from chapter three onwards (mostly). It will be plain in the chapter title which version it is, as it will have "Canon (blah)" as warning that it is NON-slash and what I see as ACTUALLY taking place after book five & before book 6, instead of writing 2 different stories which I was haggling over for a while, but I really don't want to do. These two versions will vary somewhat, though how much shall depend on the slashy bits…

In this fic I'm taking into account all the books and the movies that are available to the public.

WARNING: this fic contains implied family violence and you may find it disconcerting. This is a companion piece to my fic "We Are", also a Draco thoughts centric fic. (HUGE! Hug to those who reviewed on you guys are so SWEET!)

Disclaimer: Funny, this one—Draco is not mine, belonging as he does to JKR. It is a strange thing to purge ones mind on paper like this.

You heard nothing…

I don't exist…

----

By the way the poem at the beginning of this fic is MINE! If I catch anyone using it without permission…. I'll hunt you down & do a Snape on you! (Stirs potion threateningly) .

Father

Like a sword you forged me,
You made me who I am.
You are my father,
--I am your son.

Father—Lucius Malfoy: Bringer of Light; right hand of the Dark Lord; fallen angel, Lord of bad faith: you're hell on earth.

You are my elder, and my teacher in most things. You hold power and respect, prestige and control. I should revere you but I hate you and I fear you.

Yet I'm like you. Ironic really…

When you are strong I fear you, nothing stands in your way; when it does you find a way to destroy it. You rail at Mother as if she was an unliving doll: feeling nothing, dumb to your words and careless thrown pain. I wish she were… perhaps it would be better that way.

I hate you

But I want to be like you

Not your cruelty to her but your strength: to be like stone with no feeling, to love nothing and no one but yourself. You're invulnerable, untouched by fear of any kind. Almost—immortal, untouchable: either by time nor weakness or folly.

Of that I am proud

Yet I want to kill you, destroy you—replace you. I want to own myself, with power over others: to create and destroy by my will. To be feared yet loved by some.

I hate weakness, I fear it—I despise it. I hate this hold you have on me. Like a puppet I am pulled by fear, the one holding strings—only you.

You made me as I am!

You broke me as a child, grinding me to dust with your heel—I could do nothing. Only hide in the bathroom fighting tears, hearing yells and curses: slapped down, beaten and cowed. I withdrew and grew cold, adopting silence. Emotion was a weakness—I could see that. Showing anything: a mark of fear. Feeling anything: a dangerous task.

At home a mask I forged, to the world I wear it, seeming bored. I am but two halves, not what I make you see.

Mother—beautiful font of silence, why did you just stand and watch? He holds your soul in fear I know, yet what of me? You bore witness as he broke me yet you did nothing! Why? Am I not your son?

I don't understand how I came to be. Father, how can you create another when the woman to be the mother you disregard? Mother, why did you let him touch you thus when he treats you so… Did he love you then? Did he make love to you? Or did he take you, fuck you and let you bleed. I'll never know

I don't want to. I fear the answer…

Mother? To love someone, how does one stay sane? They can destroy you. Their demise; a sure thing surely, will rend one asunder. Will it not?

How does one love?

Without power over the other, how do things work? I don't understand…

I think—to be safe, utterly, what a dream! Impossible.

But what a dream—

To sleep so, twined with another: with trust, understanding—nothing more…

So fucking unreachable!

Goddamn this life that we must dance along such fated lines! Like dogs whipped to obedience, what are we? What the hell am I!

A Malfoy, forged in stone—I feel nothing

Father—we are inviolate are we not? We hold our own against the world! A Malfoy a thing of stone, we are untouchable! Owned by none, we rule others: no one else important.

But you fell--

I hate you when you're strong but when you're weak? What am I supposed to feel!

To see you weak brings me shock, I am unbalanced.

My world on edge, I am falling.

I feel lost--

(Takes deep breath)

AN) Dear god that was cathartic! My parent's interaction over the years ever since I can remember, his duality with caring and violence and how I felt last year on hearing of my father's heart attack and seeing him after the operation… weak, drained of color, delirious—I don't know. To live in the shadow of somebody so strong with a streak of such unthinking cruel obscenity—kinda makes you question many things in life. What truly matters, among them... And working in retail as I do, seeing others with the same histories, others trapped in such vicious circles, my views on humanity are perhaps tarnished.

Shrug

To live is never an easy thing… those who we love and who love us are the most precious things. Pity we seem to sometimes forget that…