Chapter 13
We'd opened the second bottle of whiskey, this was surely a combination for disaster. Draco sat on the couch, tears rolling off his perfect face. I sat empty, emotionally spent bottle of whiskey to my lips. There was a certain freedom in saying it to someone regardless of how much they already knew. There was a certain lightness that had never been present within me before.
“So now you understand.” I murmured between gulps.
“How?” Draco's voice was thick, filled with tears
“How what?” I looked over at him again, red faced and almost cherub looking.
“How after everything you have experienced, all the sacrifices you were forced to make, the hell you were dragged through you're still you?” He breathed deeply before continuing
“Here you sit as if I am not completely changed after hearing your incomplete story? You lived it, you endured it. How can you sit there, still and calm? How can you sit across from me and still be? You remain kind, generous and strong regardless of the hardships.”
“Draco, I am changed. I do not remain the same, as if frozen in amber. I am a vampire, I am a creature. I am not a man nor a wizard, the war changed all of us in ways we cannot begin to articulate. Maybe I seem as though I have remained steadfast in my ways, remained good and light and kind to you. But that is only to you, you see someone who you went to school with, someone who was forged into a weapon and then became a person. I know better. I am and will always remain a weapon regardless of how society tries to temper me. My sense of good and light has learned to waver, to dip deeper and deeper into the darkness.
I have raged and cried and demanded answers. All it ever does is bring forth that I am alone. That the only answers that I might have ever gotten are long dead with Tom Riddle.” I sighed.
“What would raging accomplish?” I asked
“A sense of well…. something?” He had managed to quell his tears.
“The issue here, love… is that should I rage, should I lose it completely… I"m not entirely sure I would come back from it. Not entirely sure that the world would come back from it. It's better than I made my peace. That has to be enough”
Draco was looking at me then, openly and plainly grey eyes wide.
“Does it?” his voice was a whisper, a calling to something primal within me that longed to burn it down.
“It must” I answered, forcing whatever it is down, smothering it with all my might. Draco rolled his head against the arm of the sofa in tandem with him rolling his eyes.
“We should go to bed really” I sighed
Draco waggled his eyebrows at me and I tried my best not to snort at the ridiculousness of it. I held out my hand to him as I stood and he took it, albeit shakily. He stood on legs not even fit for a newborn calf and immediately flopped back onto the couch.
“Can't” he murmured and I shook my head. It really shouldn't have been so endearing and yet the smile that overtook my face was something else. I leant forward and scooped the blonde into my arms and started towards the second floor.
“I like it when you smile” He muttered, I hummed, concentrating on not dropping him. His hand wormed its way up to my hair, tugging through the curled strands. I kicked the door to his room open and deposited him on the bed. But his fingers were curled in my hair still as I tried to move away.
“No. Stay here” His voice was slurred, thick with sleep
“I can't risk it love” I whispered but his fingers were slack in my hair and his breathing slow.
He was already asleep.
Bastard.