A/N: Thank you guys so much for your patience – I know the last chapter was a bad time for a long break, but I was caught up in the flufftober fog. But I've segued neatly from that into NaNoWriMo, so here we are! Full disclosure, this chapter was originally going to include what the next chapter will start with – where we finally learn what the hell happened with Draco and why things turned out this way, but that would've taken another few days and I wanted to give you guys something ASAP.


The moment Marilyn's feet met solid ground again, her legs buckled. Although that could've easily been down to the state of her mind just as much as the state of her body. Draco's hold on her remained vice-like and he followed her to the ground, but from her limited awareness of him, she suspected he had about as much choice in that matter as she'd had. She squirmed in his hold, unsure of whether she was trying to shove him away or pull him closer, but the effect was the same either way – entirely fruitless. His grip wasn't budging. But she had bigger worries than that.

A lifetime of dancing had given her a high pain tolerance, but the agony radiating from her knee – agony renewed with every beat of her pulse, which she could feel throbbing throughout her whole leg – was unlike anything Marilyn had ever felt. It was swiftly swelling badly, too, already straining against the tight confines in her jeans until it felt like either the denim or the skin would soon split.

Breathing did fuck all to help, but it was just about all she had. And it wasn't like she could stop.

They were in yet another godforsaken wilderness. Britain was hardly vast, she would've thought she'd seen the whole bloody thing by now, but apparently not. Towering all about them were snow covered hills, littered here and there with little miniature forests like the one they sat in now. Had she been in better shape, it might've worried her – for running anywhere here would be a task and a half. But now there was little difference between Everest and a flat tarmac road as far as she was concerned.

Draco sat on the snowy ground behind her. All she could see of him were his long legs, clad in black suit trousers, sprawled diagonally to her left. One of his arms was wrapped around her waist, his other hand gripped her arm. It was suffocating and comforting in equal measure, and she dreaded the moment she calmed enough to think because she had no idea what she would say. Nor what he would. This moment of shock and hysteria was their only moment of calm, and the moment the world came crashing in, there'd be no beating it back again.

Considering how she could feel his ragged breathing at her back, he was in a similar state. She couldn't hear it, though, over the hammering of her own heart.

But she couldn't stay removed from reality forever. It dripped back in slowly. In the snow that melted beneath her and seeped steadily into her jeans, in the way her pain gained a fresh edge as the adrenaline faded and was replaced by exhaustion and tremors, and in how her mind inevitably began to tug her towards what came next. What could possibly come next? Like this? How could she even continue clinging to hope? Would it not have been better if – no. She flexed her knee and cried out at the pain, using it to hard-reset her brain and jolt her out of that spiral.

It wasn't a pleasant distraction, but it was a distraction all the same.

Draco, she knew, was going through a similar process behind her. To begin with, his grip had been bruising, but she doubted he was even aware of it – aware of her. Instead, he was holding onto her merely so he had something to hold onto. Gradually, though, it loosened. Just a little. Once it slackened as though he meant to let go, but then it renewed again, and she felt him set his forehead down upon the back of her shoulder.

By the time she managed to speak, her entire body was either numb or in absolute bloody agony.

"What…" her voice was thin and reedy, and she had to take a deep breath in before she spoke again – although there was no fixing how her voice trembled. "What was the plan?"

"What?"

He tensed behind her, although his question seemed more born of shock rather than confusion at the question itself. Marilyn didn't repeat herself. She wasn't being stubborn, she simply wasn't capable. Her knee kept throbbing. Despite the frigid winter air, a cold sweat had worked its way all across her brow, the wisps of hair that had escaped her ponytail in the skirmish sticking to her face.

"He…they…would have interrogated you. Torture. More for the fun than the information. Then they would have killed-"

His words were muffled by her back, and by her pain, but she still heard them – and didn't want to hear more of them. Not those ones.

"N-not his plan. Not thei- fuck!" she dug her hand into the snow, because that pain was better than the one radiating throughout her leg. "Yours. Today. What did y-you think would happen today?"

The pressure of his head against her shoulder disappeared as Draco lifted his head.

"…I thought you'd get away."

The noise that clawed its way out of her throat was a whimper, mixed with a sobbed laugh. He thought she'd outrun or outfight an entire squad of Death Eaters. A murder of Death Eaters. God, how she wished she was whatever inhuman being he seemed to have convinced himself she was. Or who he wanted her to believe he thought she was. Because even in her present state, she could hear how he didn't sound convinced of his own words.

"And if I didn't?"

"You didn't. You saw what happened after. You were there."

"Did you plan that bit?"

She didn't stutter then – but her voice did break. It took clenching her jaw so hard her teeth risked cracking so that she didn't start crying.

"I thought you'd…I hoped you'd…I didn't think of what would happen if…but then it…I couldn't, Marilyn. Not that. I couldn't watch as-"

At that, he cut himself off. It would've been a lie if she pretended she wasn't glad for that. But he made a strangled sort of noise, and when she tried to turn to look at him, he stopped her before the pain in her leg could achieve the same job. Marilyn realised then that he wouldn't be able to say any of this if they were looking at one another. She pressed a hand over his, where it was secured around her middle. His hands were as freezing as hers, but the other let go of her arm and placed itself atop hers.

A lump remained in her throat, and her vision was blurred, but her breathing slowed.

Apparently reassured, he continued.

"There was no easy choice. I'm not Potter. I don't…I don't do the right thing by default – I'm not a hero, Marilyn. And my family…" she listened as he took a few deep, shuddering breaths. "But if I hadn't…if I hadn't done this, and I had to sit in the manor tonight…even if not watching but knowing that you…I would have wished I'd done this. I would have regretted not doing this. And now that I have, I don't regret that I did, because I couldn't have lived with myself if- but my family…my mother…"

His body shuddered where his torso was pressed against her back.

"I'm sorry," she sniffled.

She didn't know what she was apologising for. For asking, maybe. For ever speaking to him in that Muggle Studies class all those years ago. For the Dark Lord's existence, for the war, for ever catching his eye in the first place, for her stupid little stunt on that stage that had carved a bullseye firmly into her back. Some of those things weren't even her own damn fault, but she was still sorry for it. She was sorry for everything. Because what was there to be thankful for?

Other than Draco. And what he'd done for her today.

"Thank you," she added, leaning back into his hold.

His grip tightened, and he pressed his head against hers. For a while it kept appearing as though he meant to speak – a false start here and there as he went to begin, and then stopped and went back to trying to master his breathing. It was a task that occupied them both, for the throbbing of knee had overtaken her from the hip down, and even up to her skull, inducing a dire headache. But she wouldn't allow it to distract her from this.

"I wouldn't have done it – I wouldn't have been able to do it – if I didn't love you. Tell me you know that, Marilyn."

"I do," she breathed. "I love you too."

"Still?"

Always. That was where this thing was going, wasn't it? Even if always ended up being agonisingly short, with how things were looking.

"Still," she repeated quietly.


A/N: tumblr – esta-elavaris