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— Dedicated to sweetbutpsycho13

SEVEN READ THE LETTERS, one after another after another, and she didn't stop until she was able to recite them by heart — just as she used to be able to.
  Time had forced gaps in her memory, great chasms of forgetting that had forged some lines of the letters as foreign to her.
  It had been too long since she'd last read them. She'd allowed herself to forget, and in turn, strayed from her purpose.

  She stared down at the third letter, marked III, the longest of all.

I can't even say your name aloud anymore and it kills me.
I hate this. I hate them. I hate everything they've done and I hate what we've become.
But I also love you too much for you to hate me. And perhaps these secrets I keep make me selfish, all I know is they certainly make me a coward, but that's a small price to pay.
Maybe one day you'll realise, that is — if I ever actually get the courage to send these letters. I guess I keep hoping that if I write it all down then one day, when this is all over, I can show you just how much it killed me to kill you.
— One day, when all those small prices finally add up, when every lie we told ourselves catches up with us. Because rest assured they will.

I remember when I first told you I wasn't made for this life, and you told me that we are not our fathers. But now, I fear you may have been wrong, and with every day that passes I become more certain of that. We are our father's children, there's no changing that — and no stopping what we must become to survive.
Do you remember the day after? When I cried and told you there must be some way, there must be another choice, but you said we were born without. Every word. I remember every damn word you said. They're all I have left now.

  There is no out. You said that yourself — you're either in or you're dead.
Well, my love, I think I've made my choice.

Her eyes scanned the words. Over and over and over. Her eyes scanned the words, but nothing went in. It hurt to think, that maybe there was someone out there, waiting, searching for her, and so she didn't — didn't think at all.
Disassociating herself from the pages wasn't so hard after all, not when she knew nothing of the life they told. It was easy enough to think of it as a story instead, a tragic tale of love and loss.

Seven tucked the letter safely back into her bag. One more, she told herself, then she would lay them to rest for the night. IV marked the fourth, tear-stained and torn slightly in one corner.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
  I tried to help but all I did was make it worse. All they do is take and take and I'm not sure how much I have left to give. You were right. I'm so sorry. I should've trusted you and left things alone like you said.
  But it's too late now, I'm caught up in it, hopelessly tangled in this mess I've made. There is no getting out of this noose now.

I'm sorry, forgive me, please.
 
After that, she put them away. She didn't bother to reread the fifth. She knew the hastily scrawled like beneath the V like she knew her own hand.

Come find me tonight, in the place we first kissed.

The remaining two: she didn't dare think of.
With that, Seven stood, wrapping her arms around herself to ward away the frigid air and hissing as her wounded hip protested. She dreaded to think what the letters carved there looked like now and at one point she had debated mutilating herself further just to spite him — cutting out the last traces of him. She couldn't bring herself to, however, as after passing out the first time when Draco had done them, and if his carvings had been a drowning wave, then cutting out the letters would surely be a tsunami.

A thin tendril of chill had begun to work itself through the halls of the compound. Seven shivered, feeling it anchor itself about her bones.
It may have been Draco's room, but that didn't stop her from locking the door as she began to fill the porcelain tub, wide and thick-lipped. She couldn't remember the last time she'd even seen a bathtub, let alone had a moment spare to allow herself the luxe of one.

Peeling off her clothes, folding them neatly, she left them in the centre of the bed. The bathroom tiles were shockingly cold beneath her bare feet, and the air lashed itself like a cruel man's whip against her naked skin.

  Steam curled upwards in thick, unladen coils from the pooling water, and as she lowered herself gingerly into it, Seven deliberately didn't let her gaze wander south. Maybe if she didn't look at what he'd done to her, then it could be as though it never happened.
  The water cocooned her in a vat of warmth, working away at the tense lines of her shoulders and soon, Seven began to relax. Her head resting against the back edge as she closed her eyes, pretending she was anywhere other than here, anyone other than herself.

In the back of her mind something toyed; a strange, unusual kind of something — a feeling she hadn't known for a long time.

A memory.

She could see it, there, in the distance, but like all far off things, when she reached out her palms to capture it she felt only air.
The memory keened like a unlocked door at the end of a hall, just waiting for her to open it, secrets whispering for release; and her unconscious mind for the catharsis.

The sounds of the compound held her back from that memory-laden door, like shackles to her ankles. Water whirred in the underground pipes, and distant shouts echoed from somewhere she didn't bother to locate. Life buzzed all around her, the shrill and shaking thrill of it firmly grounding her to this current reality.

And so, she shut it out, turned it off — all of it.

Seven submerged her head beneath the water, as finally, she found solace. The water was hot, almost painfully so against her closed eyelids, already sore from a lifetime of tears. The absence of air burned like a fire in her lungs, but she didn't mind, it was a small price to pay for salvation.

The chains around her loosened, dropping like a dead weight. Finally she was free, imagining herself sprinting towards that far off door, eager fingers clawing at the handle as finally the door was wrenched open and a memory exploded around her.

Rain pounded on a fine-paned window, a storm nearing the horizon. Thunder trembled but never quite found its voice and a fire roared beneath a marble hearth.

Seven sat tall in her seat. The table was long, with enough seats for twenty people, though only one pale face stared back at her. It was hauntingly gaunt, with snake-like eyes and ghostly-white skin. "Well, is it done?"

"Yes, my Lord." Her vocal chords moved of their own accord, confident in a way so innate she could never hope to replicate it — in a way like she belonged.

At the other end of the table, the Dark Lord's fingers curled around one another, looking more like the bare bones of themselves than skin covered flesh. "Good." His lip curled into something halfway between a snarl and a half-hearted attempt at a smile. "Time and time again you have proven yourself our most important asset, far surpassing the usefulness of even my most faithful men — your father included."

  "Thank you, my Lord." Her head bowed, "It is an honour."

  The Dark Lord's smile twisted in sickening satisfaction, "You know now what you must do," He said, predatory eyes scanning for even the smallest hesitation, " — You know what must be done."

  Seven was stoic; shockingly so, her face schooled into the perfect portrait of austerity as she replied, "Kill him."

  The moment the words left her lips, something tore. A fracture forced itself down the centre of the memory, splitting the scene in two, allowing the water to flood in. It filled the gaps with an agony, a raw, scalding pain.

  A scream attempted to force itself from Seven's chest only to catch hopelessly in her throat, drowning itself before it could be born. But then, as the last image of the Dark Lord faded into the black of her eyelids, she settled, becoming sediment as her back met a firmness.

  Sleep tugged at her limbs, weighing her down like rocks at the bottom of the ocean. Even if she had wanted to, she couldn't have surfaced. Some small, delirious part of herself asked, did she want to? — She wasn't sure. It was peaceful down here, warm, quiet. And she was sure she could get used to this burning in her lungs, a dull-edged pain, not  at all sharp like that of a dagger.
  She could hear her heart too, and with every slowing beat the pain began to ebb.

  Seven found herself welcoming this goodnight, she'd allow her memory-muddled brain the mercy of sleep, but just for now. Soon she'd wake and be forced back into the fight.
  Embracing it with open arms, finally, everything around her — within her, stilled.

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QOTD- rant to me