A/N: Important note at the end about the future of this pairing. I'm also very sorry for the wait – I had to sit and actually plot out the rest of this fic using pen and paper because so much is about to happen and I had to make sure I had it all planned out correctly!
Marilyn sat in only jeans and a bra, a blanket clutched to her front and her hair pulled forwards so that Draco could dab a soothing agent on the welath of the cuts and bruises at her back. After her close call with the snatchers, there seemed to be little of her that wasn't scratched, cut, bruised, or scraped. Including her morale.
He'd come as soon as he caught word with her close call, and whatever admonishments she'd offered regarding the wisdom in that had fallen on deaf ears. Primarily because she looked like she'd just been fucked in a hedge backwards - his butchery of the idiom, not hers. The notion that he should help clean her up had also been his. If her fourth year self could've paid witness to that, she never would have believed it, but he'd been so shaken upon first seeing her that she didn't have the heart to tease. Especially considering she was hardly unbothered herself.
"It was stupid to come north," he said finally, smoothing the salve on a particularly sore bruise at her shoulder blade.
"It also would've been stupid to go south. Or east. Or west."
Or up, down, sideways, backwards, forwards, over, under. Anywhere that didn't involve spontaneously transforming into a pureblood. Given that they'd yet to invent a spell for that, she was starting to see she was fucked in every direction. Including in hedges backwards, according to Draco's colourful turn of phrase.
Her broom was proof of that. It sat some ways away on the ground, a great jagged, scorched black crack running through the previously immaculate white wood. It had proven to be beyond repair – by her own wand, by Draco's, it mattered not. Whenever she glanced at it, she was reminded of how it had saved her life. And now it no longer could. So what about next time? Because there would be a next time.
"I'll get you another," he said, catching her line of sight over her shoulder.
"No, you won't."
"Yes I will, Marilyn."
"It's too dangerous."
"So is not getting you one. And being here. And breathing."
She scoffed at having her own words parroted back to her.
"We're being stupid," she said quietly.
"We've been being stupid for…oh, three or four years now."
On the snark scale, especially as far as Draco Malfoy was concerned, that was so light that it didn't even register on the scale. Not least because it was so very true. So she couldn't really explain why that was the trigger that sent her into a flood of tears. Even more surprising was Draco's reaction, although it shouldn't have been – no, her surprise when he pulled her back against his chest was more to do with how long she'd grown used to a lack of anything resembling comfort or affection than his character. Gone was the boy who once would've mocked her for displaying any emotion of any kind.
"If I could go back and sit somewhere else during that Muggle Studies class, I wouldn't change a thing," he sounded angry for that fact.
And who could blame him if he was? Their situation was a mess. It would be all too easy to focus only on the bad – on the danger, on the paranoia of being caught – and not on the good. But for all of the danger this arrangement put them in, she could not deny the good. Not only in having company here, sporadic as it was, or the broom, or the meagre comfort in knowing that maybe – just maybe – he'd hear something of a plan of attack on her before it happened, and be able to warn her in time, but because she loved him.
Sharp-tongued and prickly as he could be, she wasn't blinded to how it masked an intense wish to do good, even if circumstances often conspired to block that possibility. He was fiercely intelligent, and loyal to those who he deemed worthy of it, and he carried an intensity in all things he did that she found captivating because she so rarely saw it in others – because she was so often mocked for it, when it came to how she'd been with her dancing.
The fact of the matter was, it was mortally dangerous for the both of them, but more so for him – and he stood to gain less from it. Save, perhaps, for a sense of doing the right thing amidst an endless parade of horrors, and…her. But while a lack of self-belief was never something Marilyn could be accused of, at that moment – tired, scared, cold, and sore as she was – she just couldn't see how he could ever think she was worth it.
His chest was hot as a fire in contrast to the frigid air, even through the shirt that lay between it and her bare back, but that wasn't why she pressed back so tightly to him.
"I have never been so glad to be an idiot," he mumbled into her shoulder.
Marilyn only cried all the harder for the confession, clinging to his arms where they were wrapped around her middle until he pulled her so tightly against him that it was a wonder they didn't fuse together.
"We are getting through this, Marilyn, do you hear me? We are getting through this," he insisted, his voice rough. "There is no version of events where we do not. Not after…not after everything. We didn't keep coming back to each other – despite the distance, despite the…the differences – for nothing. We didn't survive all of this just to…we didn't come all this way only to not make it."
It took a few deep, painstaking breaths before she was able to respond – with words that weren't really hers, but ones she'd heard repeated around ballet rehearsal rooms ad nauseam.
"We didn't come this far to only come this far," she said.
"Exactly," he agreed firmly. Keeping her close and pressing a kiss to her bare shoulder, repeating again. "We're getting through this. I refuse to accept any other outcome. Ever."
Draco walked through corridors of Malfoy Manor towards his bedroom with tense shoulders and a clenched jaw. One might be tempted to think that, when under circumstances that were constantly unbearable, that very unbearableness in itself might eventually become tolerable. That it was possible to grow desensitised to it, and simply view it as the new normal. But while it certainly jarred him less now than it did in the beginning, while he came to expect the worst now, there was nothing sufferable about it.
He was hanging on by a thread, and watching everybody he lov- everybody who he cared for doing the same was not helping matters. His father looked as though he was still in Azkaban, his mother looked like a ghost, and Marilyn…Marilyn had the appearance of one who was next in line for the gallows. Were it not for her fear, and how uncharacteristically obvious it was on her face, he mightn't have been able to overcome his own. Had she reacted to all of this with smiles and laughs and jokes, he may have cowed to his own fear and stopped turning up. But there was something about hers that made him endeavour to master his – to be decisive, and to be hopeful where she could not be.
All he could do was hope that it would last. If it didn't, though, he would have to make use of it while it was still around. It would be no great thing to dig out one of his old brooms from the recesses of his wardrobes and make some excuse about going flying if he was seen taking it out. Returning without it would be the risky part, but he'd gotten this far.
We didn't come this far to only come this far, she'd said.
He had to believe that she was right.
As he neared his bedroom, however, only to be greeted with a door that was ajar, light streaming out into the hall from inside, and an almighty ruckus, all coherent thought melted away.
Heart hammering – another norm these days, if the Dark Lord didn't murder him, a heart attack would – he barrelled into the room half-expecting to see him himself rooting around through his things. But instead he saw Pansy, her hair in disarray and her face contorted into a sneer as she tore through his desk, emptying drawers by pulling them out and upturning them, rifling through the contents, and moving onto the next.
"Have you lost your mind?" he demanded at a shout.
None of the immediate horror or regret he'd expected to see on her face even flickered across it at all, as she straightened and turned to stare at him with a sort of imperiousness that she had no right to.
"No. No, but I think you have," she countered immediately.
"What the bloody hell are you-"
"Marilyn. Baxter," she stretched out each syllable until they were practically words in their own right.
Considering how often he'd feared someone throwing that name at him when he'd least expected it, he was already well-practised in keeping any sort of reaction from his face. Well, any reaction other than feigned confusion.
"You really have lost your mind, what do you think you're playing at?" he scoffed.
"Marilyn Baxter," she repeated furiously. "Don't pretend you don't know who I'm talking about!"
"Of course I know who you're talking about – the uppity little mudblood from fourth year, but I fail to see how a stupid tart who will soon be dead is the reason for your rooting around my bedroom."
Pansy watched him as he rolled his eyes at her, looking no more cowed at his words save for the tears that filled her eyes. She wiped at them furiously, shaking her head and breathing a laugh.
"I must admit, Draco, you're very good. Very convincing. I'm almost glad to see it – it stops me from being too annoyed at myself for believing it all this time. Speaking of, when has all this time been, exactly? Since fourth year? Some time afterwards?"
"You're rambling, Pansy, and none of it is making any sense."
"Of course it's not," she bared her teeth in a bitter imitation of a grin. "Maybe I should call her Meryl Monroe, and then you'll know what I'm talking about."
Something in Draco's chest seized up so tightly that he was certain his ribs would snap.
"I suppose she thought it was terribly clever," she sniffed, "she always was a smug little bitch. Meryl Monroe. Like the Muggle actress, Marilyn Monroe. As if nobody would understand that reference – that just because we know they're beneath us, we're clueless about them."
"How long exactly have you been snooping through my things?" he asked, his voice dangerously quiet now.
His wand was still in his hand, as it had been ever since he heard the commotion from his bedroom. Perhaps he could…
Pansy laughed – a high-pitched, belligerent sort of laugh. "You've set a precedent here of not answering questions, Draco. Why should I answer that one?"
"So you snooped around my bedroom and found I've been writing to a girl from Beauxbatons, put two and two together and come up with twenty-two, is that it?" he scoffed.
"If that's true, one of our parents can talk to their contacts in France and verify that such a girl exists," Pansy said evenly.
"I take my orders from you, now, do I, Pansy?" Draco's mother's voice cut through the room and dread washed over him, cold and all-consuming.
Pansy he could handle – with force, if pushed. If his life depended upon it. But his mother? It offered little consolation that Pansy's face paled considerably. Draco did not remove his attention from her in order to turn and look at his mother, but he heard her footsteps approaching behind him…and didn't manage to untense his shoulders when she set one hand upon them.
"I came home to find her rooting about through my things, and rambling nonsense," he spat.
Merlin, how he hoped she'd mistake his fear for pure, seething rage.
"Mrs Malfoy…" Pansy breathed.
Apparently this had not been part of her plan.
"The Parkinsons came over to see about making arrangements for a few social occasions over the Christmas holidays. Pansy asked to use the restroom some time ago, and did not return. Surely you've been here enough times to know your way around," Narcissa asked, her voice soft and utterly dangerous.
"You don't know what he's been doing, Mrs Malfoy. If he won't tell you, then I will – because…because it's our duty, to save him from himself!" Pansy insisted.
"I heard your accusations," his mother said. "I heard how you had the gall to come into my home, and accuse my son of being a blood-traitor."
"I didn't…not that…"
"I'd assume that you have proof?"
A question that Draco dreaded the answer to, if ever there was one. And it seemed that she did – based on how decisively she turned to his desk and took up his inkpot. Unscrewing the lid, she defiantly then turned that lid upside down and…stared in dismay to see nothing but the smooth metal underside. He'd taken it out in a moment of paranoia not two full weeks beforehand. Such was his relief, that his legs almost threatened to give out beneath him.
"It was…it was right here…"
"In an inkwell?" his mother asked drily.
"It was-"
"And what was it?"
"A…a piece of writing with a woman's name on."
"A woman's name?"
"Her name! A code name. Meryl Monroe, for Marilyn Baxter-"
"Again, what proof have you? Other than tenuous, paranoid delusion?"
"I…I…"
"Yes. I thought so. I suggest you rejoin your mother, Miss Parkinson, and keep these ridiculous accusations to yourself before I decide it's appropriate to bring them to your father. As well as my husband."
The name of Lucius Malfoy still carried something in their circle, for Pansy's mouth snapped shut quickly. But Draco knew they could not count on it for long. Returning the inkwell to the desk, she left with pursed lips and a bowed head, closing the door behind her.
"She's having a psychotic break, I tell you," Draco snorted, clearing up her mess with a wave of his wand and moving to step towards it.
Until his mother's grip on his shoulder tightened; not enough to hurt, but enough to keep him in place. When she spoke again, all trace of the haughty confidence with which she'd dealt with Pansy was gone from her voice.
"You will remain here while I get rid of the Parkinsons. And then we need to have a very serious discussion."
A/N: So as the folk who follow me on tumblr/who read Live Forever might have seen, once this story is done, I'm calling it a day as far as my writing Draco and Marilyn goes. I'm currently trying to think of a way to wrap up Live Forever in a satisfying way, so there will be more chapters of that at some point or another, but other than that, the end is in sight.
I just feel like I've said everything that needs to be said with these two, and continuing to churn out more for the sake of it is just a waste of my time and yours – because I don't want to write something I'm not proud of solely because it's been a while since the last update. I'm sorry if this is disappointing! It's been a good few years, and a good few hundred thousand words, and it's just time.
I do have a Lord of the Rings story currently underway (Boromir/OC) for anybody who might be interested in that, and there's a link on my tumblr page where I discuss fandoms I plan to enter into in the future. I'm currently debating whether I'm going to continue my Sirius Black story or not…but, I have to admit, I'm leaning on the side of not, because I'm quickly learning that every time I try to write a Sirius story, I end up unhappy with it – some things just aren't meant to be.
When this story is done, I'll also be starting an Aemond Targaryen/OC story, because I do love swapping one posh blond bastard for another.
If none of my other stuff strikes your fancy, then it's all good, and I'm very grateful that you came along for this particular journey anyway x
