five: carcass

n.

A dead body; corpse.

She sat on the bed. Her cheeks were tear-stained and pink, and her shoulders continued to shake with her silent shudders. No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn't stop herself from crying. Everything reminded her of what had happened and her thoughts kept leading her back to that fateful afternoon when everything in her life seemed to fall apart. Not only was it heart-breaking, but it was simply exhausting for her mind to be constantly lead astray. Desperately, she tried to find happy thoughts somewhere, but they were simply hidden away too deep. There was nothing positive for her to think.

He sat beside her silently. There wasn't a thing that he could say or do to make what happened go away, and he knew well enough that she was too stubborn to admit that she needed a shoulder to cry on. She was normally so courageous and hardly ever allowed herself to show weakness. He wasn't sure what he could do for her. So he just sat there, hoping that she would eventually ask for something – anything – so that he could help her.

And she turned to him, her splotchy face still as beautiful as ever, the emotions painted so clearly into her big brown eyes. "It was my fault, wasn't it?" she asked.

There was a pang in his chest that resonated within him so fiercely that he almost felt his heart break. He could see clearly that she was asking that question with all of the sincerity in the world, and that made him want to fall apart.

"No, Ginny," he said without even a second of hesitation. "You didn't do anything wrong."

But she still didn't feel any less guilty or any less heartbroken or any less empty on the inside. "Then whose fault is it, Draco?" she asked, her voice cracking a little. "Why did this have to happen to him?"

Draco closed his eyes briefly. This was the most disconnected from his wife that he had ever felt. She wasn't comprehending anything, wasn't understanding, wasn't allowing herself to heal, and it scared him. He didn't know what to do.

He could only try to make her feel something positive. He touched his hand to her face and leaned in, pressing his lips to hers fiercely. Every ounce of his emotion he poured into her, and she kissed back with so much desperation that it was painful. He gently pried open her lips with his tongue, wanting to feel her and needing for her to feel him, and she responded in kind, clutching onto his shirt for dear life as her body warmed to his touch.

And when it was over she touched her fingers to her lips. For a long moment, she remained quiet, looking down at her feet. The kiss had given her a second of solace, but it didn't keep her mind from wandering right back to where it started. "If I would have got there a minute sooner…" she began, her voice quavering just a bit. Her eyes locked with his. "If it were only a minute, Draco… maybe… maybe I could have done something, right?"

With a heavy heart, Draco shook his head. "No, Gin."

"But the Healer said… he said when he examined the body! He said that maybe –"

"Ginny!" Draco said, exasperated.

Her tears began to fall again, silently cascading down her cheeks. "But I just feel so responsible."

"I know you do, but the way you're thinking is going to make you sick." He touched his finger to her chin, gently pressing up and forcing her to meet his eyes. "When you found your father, it was already too late. You did nothing wrong."

Ginny shook her head. "I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that."

Draco's head fell in defeat. He didn't know what else to do, what else to say. He didn't know how to comfort someone – even someone he loved so deeply. It was a sad realization, one that broke his heart to face. But in a moment of clarity, he realized what he had to do for her right then and there. He had to say something that would comfort her, even if it wasn't something that wasn't completely true.

He sighed and closed his eyes briefly. "Ginny, I talked to the Healer when you were with your family," he said. "Your father's whole body shut down immediately. It wouldn't have mattered if you were there a second before he died or an hour and a half. You couldn't have stopped him from dying. He was sick, and that was not because of you."

And when her eyes met his again, he could still see that she didn't believe him. She still believed with all her heart that she could have saved him, but within her sad eyes, there was the tiniest glimmer of relief and a spark of hope that what Draco had said was true. She was still haunted by the moment that she found him lying dead on the kitchen floor of her childhood home and saddened by the thought of living without the most important man in her life…

But she would survive it.

A/N: This story was written for the Six Senses Competition, category: emotion. Prompts were helpless, tired, and pain.