Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger

Setting: continuation of I Have Been Waiting

Word Count: 1277 words

He was so warm it was almost suffocating. The breaths of air tasted like rust, of damp grass, of singed parchment. He could hardly see anything but he wasn't trying to; he kept his eyes closed and gasped in more polluted oxygen.

His head moved side by side, the sensible thing to do so that he could clear his senses and know what was going on, but he was done doing the right thing. He was done doing what he was supposed to in order to live.

He wasn't living. He knew it, his parents knew it, those who counted him as their friend knew it. This, he had started calling it over five years ago, was simply surviving. Putting food in his mouth, consuming water and getting out of bed for work were all temporary acts to live the life he had survived for. Drinking or staying in the study were times when he felt as if he was living, but to him, it also felt as if he was being sawed in half and dying all over again, time and time, repeatedly, constantly, agonizingly.

Believe him, he tried. He tried and failed, and went into the study, got out and tried again. That cycle only worked for four years, and then everything just went downhill from then, and right at this moment, when he was choking on his own spit, it felt like he had reached Hell.

So he took one last breath, and he finally gave in to the defeating part of his mind and rest.

Time always passed so slowly when he closed his eyes. Nights felt like two full moons, and days seemed to drag like the trail of the sun in the middle of deserts, and the ticking of clocks always sounded like canons with the flicker of flames burning through the fuse yet never goes off.

Fingers brushed through his hair and he felt his cheek rise against the softest of pillows. His unmoving fingers could feel the crisp of the shirt, of the warmth emitting from the flesh, and he could register why the musk of vanilla and water-lilies shot a hole through his own chest.

"I… I wasn't expecting this." His throat was probably still clogged with all the smoke, because he couldn't speak the words.

A feather's touch and a hand enveloped his own, and brushed against his flesh as if satin had passed through in-between his fingers.

"I wasn't expecting you."

Despair could play cruel tricks on people and that he knew all too well. He had seen it in the people that was previously in his life, when they thought they would have a chance of redemption away from prison, but then was sentenced for life to incarceration: he could light forests up with the lights that went out in the depths of their eyes. He had rejoiced, of course, as they had been dragged to their own versions of hell, but the exhilaration had often been encountered by a thoughtful reminder that he was within that category of being.

Nothing was keeping him from going back. He had tried, tried not for himself, and failed and failed so many times he was used to it. He had been weak, and he was weak, but if this was real, he was more than fine with that trait being the only reminder of his life. He was fine with it.

The first thing he saw when he crept his eyes open was their joint hands. Hers was pale like his, and their fingers were frighteningly alike, slender and long. And then it was her curls, volumes of it, snaking along her chest, her shoulders and fanning over her head.

And he fell into the orbs of her chocolate brown eyes.

He was reminded once again there were thing more important than life itself: every flutter of her eyelashes, every wrinkle of her brow, every twitch of her nose, every flex of her ankles, every lift of her legs, every breath that she had taken.

He fully condones loving someone so much he feels like dying when he stared into her eyes.

"They came for me." He wanted to say something else; he didn't want to get so comfortable with the sense of relief and calm since he had learned his lesson all those years ago.

She ran a hand down her face and he thought that her head went out of focus for a spilt second, so he moved closer still. They both sighed when her hold on him never wavered.

"I know. They were tracking you, and you were tired."

"Careless." He breathed. The melody of her voice sunk into his pores and his whole body just wanted to burrow further into hers and let them become one again. He felt like he was drunk; his eyes felt like they were on fire.

"Weighed down." She was good at defending him just as he was good as surrendering. That never could change.

"Stalling." It was an obvious explanation to him, and it was pretty clear without the shrug.

She gave him a look, "Cheating." and he almost managed a smile.

It was their game, one word back and fro, to convey meaning worth paragraphs, or sometimes sonnets or symphonies.

"You weren't supposed to be here so soon." She was whispering, and he could the crystal of a tear ran down from the corner of her eye and down her cheek.

She was real. He was real. Her warmth was real. The lack of pain was real.

"Ten years is long enough."

She kept her solid fingers on his mouth after following the shape of his lips when he talked. "It is." It was rare of her to admit that out loud.

"It was." She was tangible now, no longer a clasp of cool spring breeze, or a ray of scorching hot sun, or the fallen leaves that slipped out of his fingers, and surely she wasn't just the bone-warming hot chocolate beside burning hot coals in the midst of the howling snow.

"You know, I hurt to see how ready you were."

"And for that, I'm sorry." It slowed his heart to know that she was looking upon him, and she had kept her promise and waited for him.

"I'm sorry, too." He shut his eyes tight as she ran a shaky hand through his hair. "For too many things."

He needed to say it; just make it as a fact as it was an assumption, "For leaving me."

"For saving you."

"That is not-"

"It was. You lived for me. I lived in you."

He was shaking his head and his world was spinning. "Endurance."

"Perseverance." Now her arms were shaking around him.

"Torture."

"Redemption."

That stopped him. He didn't know if he should be angry, or he should feel relieved.

She witnessed. She accompanied. She was there.

Yes, it was his redemption, the drive to be the man he was supposed to be, to be the man that was worthy of her, that had kept him going.

"Was it enough? Was I enough?"

"I loved you, was that?"

"Don't ask questions you already know the answer to." He retorted, and that made her laugh.

"They will miss this. Your sharp tongue and your dry remarks."

"I would be more entertained to see them weep by my grave." He tapped between her eyes to stop her from rolling them. If that reminded him how he had done the same thing to her, it didn't matter anymore.

She was here. And he was with her.

That was more than enough for him.

A/N: this was so stuck in my head that i needed it to get out