A/N: First of all, I am sorry for not updating this fic for ages. Thank you for the offers to beta read for me, thank you, thank you, thank you! The biggest thank you belongs to Marijn, of course, who is also my beta for The Final Solution.

The song of the chapter is called Sing for Absolution and it's by Muse.

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Chapter 10: Sing For Absolution

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A slight breeze runs across my face, making a few loose strands of hair tickle the corners of my eyes a bit. The breeze is chilly and the ground under my body feels cold. For some reason the coldness brings a forgotten memory from my childhood into my mind, the time when my father made me wear his green scarf one winter when I was building a snow castle at our cottage in Lapland. That was the only time he has ever done something like that for me, but I don't think he did it from the goodness of his heart. I had had pneumonia just a few weeks before the trip and Lucius probably didn't want to ruin his holiday by having an ill child to take care of. Nevertheless, at the age of eleven I liked to imagine that he did it out of love.

Opening my eyes I see a red sky above me. Purple clouds, resembling me of ripped or stretched cotton wool, run across it at a much, much faster pace than normal clouds. From the corner of my eye I can see a few branches of a tree, perhaps an old oak, reaching for the crimson sky. Turning my head to the side I can see how the poor plant is dead as burnt and black as coal. Its weirdly bent branches and twigs remain still, pointing in every direction at angry angles even though it's very windy..

I try to sit and see how my fingers press into the ice-cold, soft ground. The grass around my fingers is uncut and black, shining in a metal-like way and staying immobile despite the wind, just like the branches of the burnt tree. Clouds disappear behind the horizon almost even before you have seen them.

I stand up and look behind me, seeing the same grass grow as far as my eye-sight allows me to see, and another similar tree stands alone some distance away from the spot where I am at the moment.

Two suns parade in the sky, one white, the other black. Purple clouds hide them for a fraction of second every now and then, transforming the white sun's light to purple. The black sun stands on the left of me and the white one on the right, as far away from each other as possible, but nevertheless not so far away that the other would disappear behind the horizon. It feels like the suns are observing one another, like enemies with disagreements and grudges that were due to events that happened even before anything else existed. For some reason I don't think they have cardinal points here at all.

As I stand there, I feel how the wind starts blowing harder; it blows between my fingers and musses my hair. The purple clouds aren't running across the sky anymore; it looks like they are creeping just enough to be seen from beyond the horizon and just stay there as if to frame the edges of the landscape.

The wind is so hard now that I find it difficult to stand, so instead I choose to sit down again.

As my bottom touches the ground, there's a young child sitting next to me in light yellow pyjamas.

"Hello, did you come to watch it, too?"

I am looking at myself from fifteen years ago.

I look at him and his expensive-looking silk pyjamas with black grass-stains on the knees. He is sitting cross-legged, leaning on his hands behind him and smiling ever so slightly. He calmly looks to the sky and points at it with his index finger.

I turn to look, too, and see that the suns are moving. All of a sudden I hear this noise. It's like humming, the kind of humming that machines make and I'm reminded of the time when I stood in an elevator with my dad when he took me to see his office at the age of ten.

"They've never done this before."

I look at the boy with a frown on my face, not understanding what exactly it is that is about to happen, and then continue watching the course of events.

The suns get nearer and nearer each other, clouds advancing towards the suns as the distance between the shining orbs decreases little by little.

They are almost touching now, and suddenly the ground on which I sit feels wet and it leaves my palms and fingers stained in black mud.

There is a loud crack, much like lightning and I can actually see the power erupt from both broken suns in the form of some sort of air wave that resembles the ripples water droplets create on the surface of a puddle, wiping the spying clouds away silently.

The suns' opposite powers are mixed with each other and their shells disappear, leaving whirling green, thick smoke and white mist dancing in the middle of the sky.

Suddenly there's a blinding light. A light that is brighter than anything I've ever seen and I cover my eyes in pain.

The stinging soon becomes duller and cautiously I look to the sky again, the boy still sitting next to me.

Just a few uncountable moments ago there were two suns, one black and one white, but now only one can be seen in the sky. It is not mere whirling mist anymore, it looks solid and firm and right and real.

I smile as I look at the sun that does not really have a colour at all, it's just bright. Not in a white nor yellow sort of way, the brightness simply has no particular hue.

The boy turns to look at me, sighing. "Things always tend to change, don't they?"

A pressure wave suddenly knocks me over and instead of ending up on my back on the ground I go through it, doing a somersault and falling into a pitch-black void.

When I wake up I am not lying on my back like usual in the mornings but instead, my cheek is pressed against the pillow, which I am clutching like a drowning man hangs onto a piece of wood in a storm. My window is open and the bedroom is a bit too cool for my liking, so I get up.

As I close the window I get the feeling that I did not finish my dream, but instead it lingers and my head is even more messed up than before, if possible. I have been dreaming about suns, skies and horizons unusually often lately. For some reason I feel frustrated, and have a weird itchiness in my chest. I go make some coffee and stuff myself with something that tastes of nothing but fills me up. As I sit at my uneven table that has one loose foot I hold the mug in my hands and just look to the street out of my window. It seems like they are opening a new shop across the street.

There is a knock on my door. I turn the hoover off and go check who the guest is. Glancing at the front of my shirt I see a layer of grey dust and, scowling, I try to wipe it off.

From the peephole I see Kyle looking straight at me and my heart jumps in my chest. I can feel the pumping in my throat.

The sight of him makes me feel nothing less than strange.

I feel disgusted and betrayed, ashamed and weak, but somehow an unexplainable sense of both relief and sadness washes over me as I look at the face that used to look at me in a loving way when we made love but also twisted into something unknown and ugly and violent the last time I met him. It was like when you eat the icing off of a nice confection and then you find something nasty underneath.

His face is so familiar that even though he did terrible things to me I cannot help but see flashes of him from the time when I first met him. The Kyle I met last time was either wearing a mask or that is what he really is like. Sounds so awfully twisted and illogical but then again, I was never completely normal.

My fingers touch the lock lightly but not enough to open it.

"Draco, I know you're in there, I heard you hoovering. Please, open the door." I gulp and hear the desperation in his voice. It is making my throat clench in frustration or anticipation. "You have no idea how sorry I am and how my heart shattered into a million pieces when I realised what I had done to you. You're the most precious thing in my life, I love you! Please, let me in." I take a firmer grip.

'Then why did you do what you did?'

Kyle continues, "If I do something you can use that baseball bat on me, the one I bought for you when you said it'd be nice to play baseball sometime. You learnt fast."

Maybe I overreacted. Of course he was to suppose that I had been cheating on him, all the signs were there, after all. Harry's cologne and so forth… I wouldn't like it if my boyfriend smelt of someone else; I would have a tantrum, really. Maybe Kyle just lost it for a brief second because he cares for me so much. He's only human, like everyone else, and he could have treated me a lot worse but he didn't.

Coming to my senses and shaking my head clear of those false justifications and self-accusations, I decide to let Kyle come in to say whatever it is he wants to say and to get the things he needs, not including me, of course. I was merely an item, a possession to him, after all. I tell myself that he cannot justify his deeds in any way; you are not supposed to beat up and abuse those you love. He hasn't had an easy life and his parents were quite fucked up so I guess I will have to feel some pity towards him. I open the door and look him in the face, my own expression blank and uncaring.

"Thank you, Draco."

His voice is soft and I feel like screaming like an animal. He is supposed to act like a total bastard! It would be so much easier to hate him. Don't get me wrong, I despise Kyle to no end but he is supposed to feed my hatred!

"I am extremely ashamed of myself and see why you did what you did. I mean, why would you take me when you can have anyone you want, someone who is equally perfect with you and much better than me? I know you must hate me, I hate myself, too. Unless you want to press charges, which I would completely understand, I am going to disappear from your life once I have collected all my things."

"I –" I croak, throat dry and I swallow. I see a light of some sort of hope flashing across his eyes but also an endless abyss of apologies and pleading.

"Yes?"

I bite my lower lip. "Why did you do it?"

"I… don't know. I really don't know. I just snapped when I smelt someone else on you, I didn't think, I should have. It just made me so incredibly envious and I felt like I wasn't enough, so I wanted to hurt you for hurting me. The idea of you wanting someone else just made me lose it."

I listen to his every word and in a way understand what he's saying. I did have something going on with Harry. The fact that practically nothing happened, not at that time, does not justify what I did. I did or would have liked to have something going on with Harry. I do not say it out loud, but I was sorry.

"I'm going to go get my stuff. I take it you haven't destroyed them yet?"

I shake my head.

"Okay."

I rub my eyes, annoyed, as I hear him looking for his random items, throwing them into his bag. I had told Harry I was going to leave Kyle but now it feels like he's leaving me and I ought to protest and tell him how I love him. But I don't. I don't protest or love him. When I had opened the door I had felt uneasy and scared and cautious, but now I'm just angry and clenching my fists until the knuckles turn white. He does not deserve the insufferably calm appearance he is sporting! He should not be sorry; he should be the way he was when I last saw him! Raging, wanting to abuse me, humiliate me and deny me my freedom! It would be so much easier to hate him and tell him to fuck off. He is playing his cards well, if I don't control myself he'll be the victim. I cannot allow him that privilege.

He zips the bag closed and comes back to the hallway where I am still standing, arms at my sides, the epitome of calm. He stops in front of me.

"I guess a kiss goodbye would be too much to ask?"

I narrow my eyes dangerously but stay silent and gently he swipes his index finger along my jaw line, lifting my chin up. I look at him with cool eyes.

"You have to promise me you'll leave me alone."

He smiles at me. "I promise."

The slight touching of our lips seals something between Kyle and me. Both of us know we were something that could never have offered enough for either of us. We have reached an agreement and I am able to exhale for the first time in a long time.

I keep my eyes shut and hear the door closing behind him.

A/N: I have started on the eleventh chapter already but next I am going to update The Final Solution sometime in the near-ish future. I know, there wasn't much happening in this chapter, not in the action sort of way but I promise you that the chapter eleven is going to be a bit more eventful.

Reviews would be much appreciated!