Hide your fangs all you want, you still need the blood.
Tell us that it's different now. You're up to no good.
xXx
Take my hand, show me the way, we are the children that fell from grace.
Take my hand, show me the way, we are the children who can't be saved.
xXx
Is this what you call love?
(This is a war I can't win)
xXx
Every second. Every minute. Every hour. Every day.
It never ends. It never ends.
- It Never Ends
He was outside in the garden, which he felt somehow was an irony of sorts, but couldn't quite place how. There was a heavy mist over everything, dulling the beauty, and he thought idly that it was just as likely his own presence that spilled pools of darkness over the landscape, for not even the sun could overcome his black reality. She had left, he thought, some hours earlier, and he'd been out here some hours longer. The time told in the shadows' slow reversal upon the ground, distorted as they were by the ghostly swirls in the air.
The sun soon began to burn away his shroud, and its rays felt wrong upon his skin, as though he were being touched by something that was so far from the ability to comprehend a being such as himself that he didn't belong within its reach. And he retreated into the shade of a large tree, caring not about the dampness of the grass, or the shiver upon his skin. Because this was where he belonged. In the darkness, the shadows, hidden. The wretched, broken creature that he was. He didn't deserve to be touched by the light. He didn't want to be touched by the light.
He sank into an endless crimson sea of self-loathing. Draco was not "good." He would never be "good." He was impure. He was broken. He was despicable. He was beyond salvation, beyond hope, beyond redemption. Waiting, endlessly, for judgment day, when he would be either free from himself, or condemned, deservingly, for all of eternity. Death seemed beautiful to him. A perfect darkness. A perfect escape. A perfect belonging. But he deserved this. To be stuck within his own skin. And so he forced himself to stay, to live. And he despised his every breath.
He couldn't understand what she saw in him. What good. What redeeming quality. Because he was black. His heart. His soul. His mind. Twisted. Dark. Empty. He was selfish and cruel, arrogant and derisive. He hadn't the right to touch her with the hands that had done so much. He hadn't the right to love her as he—. And his breath halted in his chest at the thought.
Was it true? A flood of panic.
Had she resurrected enough of the organ to allow for such a sentiment? Every part of his being whispered 'yes.' Thoughts, feelings, moments he'd long suppressed came rushing to the surface in the revelation's wake.
"No," he whispered brokenly. And he realised it was over. It had to be. He wouldn't let himself love her. Couldn't let himself love her. Because he'd do it wrong —couldn't possibly do it any other way. And he'd hurt her. More than he ever otherwise could have through his self-serving use of her. And he refused to crush her as he himself had been crushed. He owed it to her to end it.
Gone. Done. Over. It echoed in his mind.