Neomi woke up slowly, painfully. Everything hurt, her head most of all. Even with the low lights of the basement, her eyes burned the moment she opened them. She squinted, letting them adjust to the light slowly, like a person getting into a cold pool a step at the time. She groaned a little and held her head in her hands, rubbing her temples.

"They did quite a number on you this time."

Neomi glanced at Draco out of the corner of her eye. "No more so than usual," she replied testily. He looked her over, sighing. She acted like it was no big deal, but he knew better. She was slipping more and more every day. He'd been outside during most of her 'sessions,' as they called them. In the first days of her imprisonment, she'd given no reaction to their torture, their taunts. But as it wore on, she'd started getting angry.

"They expect me to follow them when they hurt me," she spat, as if she were reading his mind. "Why would anyone choose to follow someone who hurt them?"

Draco shifted a little uncomfortably. His loyalty was with her, with his sister, but for all they knew, that was precisely why he did their bidding. "To make it stop," he said simply. When his parents had first brought Neomi home, she'd been more than happy to do what they said, just so they'd be nice. After the incident with the television, she'd learned that if she wanted to like her new home, she needed to do what they said. At the time, it hadn't been a big deal. She just had to stay quiet, behave. Act like a good little girl. But as time wore on, things changed. They started trying to train her to be a Death Eater, like them. But she fought them on it. She'd been raised by a muggle, a mother who'd loved her. Nothing would make her choose to hurt people like her mother, particularly not people who were proven to be less than preferable company in comparison.

She wasn't the only one who'd realized the wrongness of their behavior. Even a child raised by purebloods could recognize that there was nothing that made the torture of a young girl acceptable, particularly not because she'd asked a simple question. After that day, Draco had aligned himself with her, trying to protect his new little sister from his parents. When it was time for him to go away to school, he'd made himself into a school bully to distract the Malfoy's from her less than acceptable behavior. By the time she was also in attendance, he was the most hated member of the Slytherin house, and, as far as anyone knew, proud arch-rival of Harry Potter.

Now, protecting her was more difficult than running interference. The most he could hope to accomplish was to be the one guarding her cell so that she wasn't being tortured in between the sessions scheduled by the Dark Lord. Every time he had to stand outside the door while his father cursed her was a mark on his soul. And recently, it'd been worse. They'd started to break her. She no longer spent her sessions in silence. On her better days, she talked back. On her worst days, she whimpered. She was strong, of course. She'd lasted longer than many. But Draco knew that this was in part because they had been given orders not to truly harm her, orders that almost made Draco snort with the irony of it. In Voldemort's eyes, if she was lucid, they had not hurt her. So long as she wasn't insane, they hadn't hurt her.

He wasn't fooled, nor was his sister. Voldemort's restriction wasn't out of concern for Neomi. He pretended to care, but only so that she would think him benevolent, something he failed at. His real motive was more than obvious. If she were driven to the point of insanity, she would never be able to support his efforts, never be able to fulfill the prophecy.

Still, his request that they not drive her insane didn't have the same power it had in the first days. Bellatrix was growing bored, and his parents were growing desperate. Draco knew they were one session of their own from torturing her until she broke for good. The Dark Lord wasn't known for being kind or understanding. Every session that they failed, his father took the heat. Not that Draco was concerned for his father, but he knew that if Lucius broke before Neomi, Bellatrix would be the next to step up. At least Lucius had incentive to make her turn; if she didn't, it was his ass. But Bellatrix was a cruel woman. Draco knew for a fact that she got sick pleasure out of being tortured by her master, in addition to the enjoyment she got out of doing the torturing herself. Furthermore, she never turned down an opportunity to prove her loyalty.

"If I join him, he won't stop hurting me," Neomi said, pulling Draco from his contemplation. "Every time Lucius fails, he tortures him, sometimes worse than they do to me. And we've all heard Wormtail's screams. Despite being the one who enabled his return, the Dark Lord treats him like…" she trailed off, not knowing what to say.

"Vermin," Draco filled in. She nodded in agreement.

"I'm not a fool. I'd rather they drive me insane, or kill me. At least then I'll be beyond pain." At this, Draco scowled. She'd been getting like that lately, caring little for her own life. She'd told him after her worst session that she just wanted it to end. But Draco wanted more for her. She'd lived a short life, but she knew more suffering than most senior citizens. If she'd lived as a muggle, with her mother, she'd never had needed to worry about these things. Instead, it wasn't a worry; it was a fact.

A week ago, she'd shed a tear. On that tear, he'd vowed that he would get her out of here.

"Neomi," he whispered, "when it's all over, what do you want to do?" It was a game they'd played a lot of late. They'd spent the majority of her time in the basement making plans, talking about things they wanted to do and places they wanted to see. She thought it was a nice diversion, but Draco was secretly keeping track of everything she said. He had no intention of letting her die.

"I want… to visit America," she smiled. "Texas. The Lone Star State." It was her deepest desire, he knew. A silly wish, most people would think. It certainly wasn't New York, or LA, or any of the other places in America considered worth seeing. But her mother had been from Texas, visiting Britain on a scholarship to study abroad. Neomi had always wanted to go there, to visit her mother's hometown. She thought she might have family there. "And I want to find out who my father was."

In all her years in the Malfoy home, she'd never discovered her father's identity. Lucius had never spoke of him, beyond cursing him for being a blood traitor and telling Neomi there was no reason she should suffer for his mistake. Draco had never been trusted enough to be told. As far as he knew, he was the only Death Eater not privy to the information. All he knew, from the snippets of information he'd heard, was that the man was dead. It was hardly enough to identify him; most blood traitors were dead. Those who were alive were usually families who'd betrayed their line long ago, but the prophecy had implied the father was the direct traitor, which meant he could be any number of people. Neomi's birthday opened up a timeline for when he'd died, but there were still plenty of men who'd been killed in that time.

"We'll figure it out, Mi. And we'll go to Texas, and you'll meet all your mom's old friends. And you'll track down anyone who might be a link to your father, and they'll tell you everything you would ever want to know about him."

At Draco's insistence, she gave him a sad little smile. He knew that she didn't believe him. She was certain she'd die in this place, that eventually, they'd drive her insane or go insane themselves waiting for her to join them. Either way, she'd die. As far as she was concerned, it was only a matter of time. But Draco was taking steps, putting things into motion that he knew would save her. At the moment, the ball wasn't in his court, but he could be patient as long as she held out.

"I'm getting you out of here, Neomi. I promise." He grabbed her hand through the bars, and she smiled again.

"I know."