The next chapter at 300 comments & 100 votes!
TWs sexual content, mature content, blood, death, character distress.

SEVEN SAT ALONE by the window, staring out over the jagged skyline of the Greed district, in her hand she held a glass, the rest of bottle of red wine half-empty on the small table beside her.
In those rare moments of quiet she found her mind tended to focus in on the slightest sounds; the slight hum of a distant television, the cawing of the birds that freckled the horizon, the steady thrumming stream of water from the bathroom that told her that Draco was still in the shower. She tried not to think of it, tried not to let her mind wander beyond that door. Tried and failed, no matter how hard she tried.
She imagined him there, hands braced against the wall, head bowed beneath the shower stream, his powerful back rising and falling with slow, strong breaths. Rivulets of water, beading like thousands of tiny crystals, carving their way over the curves and planes of his muscles, flexing and tensing with the sigh that came over him as he relaxed into the warmth of the water. Steam rising like smoke, twisting through his hair, casting it that same glistening ivory as a dampened star.

Control yourself, Seven. This isn't right. Nothing good will come from this. She hadn't realised how tightly she had been holding her wineglass before it shattered in her hand. The glass shards tore into her skin, spilling blood and wine alike, a scarlet symphony that seemed to bleed into every part of the room. A murderless slaughter.

"Shit." She cursed, reaching for her bag.
Then, before she could stop it, a memory pierced her. The blood. The running shower water. The memory shot through Seven like a bullet from a gun, tearing its way through her skin and bringing her to her knees. Her legs collapsed beneath her. Glass dug into her knees and shins. More blood. The shower stream grew deafening. Images slashed through her mind, taking a part of her with them each time.
Draco, lying dead, deep gashes bore into his lifeless body. Murdered by his own selflessness. She saw him there, slumped against the shower wall, just as he had been that night in Pride, the cold stream thundering down upon him, wetting his blood to crimson streams. Streams that crawled from him, morphing into hands. Hands that came for Seven — reached out for her. His blood mingling with her own.

"Stop!" She cried out, trying to shut the memory out and trying to crawl towards the bathroom, hoping that seeing him there — alive, would stop them. Glass bore into her skin, she didn't care, didn't notice.

"Draco!" No one heard. No one came. Her pulse pounded against the walls of her skull, the world around her swaying in and out of focus as she forced herself to her feet.

He was dead. He was dead. He was dead. She knew it — knew what she would find behind that door. It was happening again. It was all she could see — his body just as she had found it, his eyes hollow and his skin pale. It was all she could feel — how cold his hand felt beneath her own as she held him, cradled him, pleaded with him.

"Draco!" She pounded her fists against the door, almost falling against it when her feet failed her. The echo was her only answer.

She couldn't do this, not again. Seven had nothing, nothing at all without him. And she hated herself for it, she should never have let this happen. She should never have let herself be foolish enough to love him.
And then, the door was gone, opened so fast that Seven had fallen through into the bathroom, though never managing to find the ground. Draco caught her, held her, picked her up and carried her back to the bedroom. He spoke softly, hurriedly, saying something to her but she wasn't listening. Only one thing mattered; he was alive.
She stared up at him; wide-eyed, unbelieving, as if seeing a deity in the flesh for the first time, which, to her, he was. She worshipped him with all the reverence of a fallen god, and he allowed her to, feeding off her piety and returning it with cruelty.

"Seven, please," He looked at her differently then, with worry and care and a darker edge of something else. A hurting edge, a new breed of iniquity. A freshly whetted weapon, only this time Draco's dagger did not point towards her. This new look said that he would burn the world for her, burn himself for her. It was as if he was seeing her for the first time again, the real Seven. Only Seven. This was the way that she had seen him all along.

"Say something," He pleaded.

All she could see was grey, her new favourite colour, the colour of his eyes. Like smoke and secrets and wandering lost. Draco's hand found her cheek, "Say anything,"

She couldn't. There were no words for this. So instead, she kissed him. She kissed him and it felt like a prayer, a divine cry; desperate, hungry, pleading for sedation. A want that demanded to be felt.

He kissed her back, rough hands fisting in her hair, with all the fervour of a forgotten man finally returning home. But all too soon he remembered himself, remembered her and all the blood that had bled between them. Seven cursed the absence of his lips as he pulled away, suddenly cold, defensive. She longed to reach back into him and pull back the warm boy who had held her beneath the stars. His eyes scanned over her, intense with concern, "Seven, what happened?"

Insecurity whispered in the back of her throat; vulnerability finding a home in her heart. She was embarrassed mostly, feeling weak for allowing such a small mishap such as shattering a glass to turn into such a bloodied mess. Her memories controlled her, provoked her, always seemingly working against her rather than with, "I — it's nothing."

"It's not nothing," Draco said, already rising from the bed and grabbing for her bag, "You're hurt."

"Don't —," Seven started as Draco began rummaging through her bag, pulling out the freshly sealed bottle of Dittony he had bought her from the market, "Don't bother, they're not that deep, you'll only waste it using it on me." They had not spoken about how her last bottle had been spent; libations to a rotting corpse.

His eyes cut up to her, "I don't care if it's only a damn paper cut, nothing used on you will ever be a waste, Seven."

Her brows pinched and her mouth set into a firm line but she said nothing as he grabbed a damp cloth and a small steel bowl to put the extracted shards in.
The lacerations to her shins hurt worst of all to tend to, not only the deepest but also the closest to the bone. He took his time with those, painstakingly making sure every piece of glass had been removed, even pausing to reassure her if she flinched or made a sound, then unstopping the Dittony and sealing the cuts shut. The magic burned as it worked. Her skin hissing and steaming as it knit itself back together. She tried her best not to react, to brace herself as each drop of Dittony burned like a scorching fire burrowing through her veins.

"Last one," Draco announced. Seven stiffened as he ran his palm along the underside of her calf, repositioning her leg on his lap. She grimaced as the last drop of magic met her skin, "Done."

Even as she began to finally relax, Draco kept his hand where it was, staring down at the smooth, unblemished skin where her wounds had been. "Can I ask you something?"

After a while, the answer came quietly, "Anything."

Draco stood, distancing himself under the guise of cleaning up, putting the Dittony back in Seven's bag and emptying the bowl into the bin. "What do you see when you have flashbacks? Do you see your life before? Or just... Nightmares."

"I used to get flashes of memories," Of all the things he could have asked her, this was probably towards the bottom of her list of willingly admitted answers, "But recently — it's only been the nightmares."

"Do you ever think that losing your memories could have been a good thing?"

Seven's stomach dropped. He posed it so casually — so infuriatingly nonchalant. He didn't understand. He never would. "No."

At her answer he paused, his back to her. Then, carefully, laying down each word like a cautious step towards a sleeping beast, he said, "But what if there was a reason for it... What if it's better this way?"

"No, Draco."

"But what if —,"

"— I said no!" All this time she had tried not to think about it, about everything she didn't know — all the memories and loved ones she'd lost without ever even knowing their names, "This will never be a good thing and you have no right to tell me otherwise!" Tears welled in her eyes as she let loose everything she'd worked so hard to keep buried, "You have no idea what this feels like! I have nothing — nothing except those damn letters! But even those hurt more than they'd ever helped... Someone loved me once, Draco, bet you didn't know that, did you." His eyes were downcast, unable to answer, but Seven wasn't done. He needed to hear her, "That's why I'm doing this, even if they're long dead — even if they moved on long ago... I need those memories — all of them, the good, the bad, I want them all. Because all I have right now is the grief of losing them without even knowing who or what I'm supposed to be mourning. Nothing is worse than nothing."

Outside, in the world beyond their own, rain began to fall. Crawling down the windowpanes and muting the sky to a rueful grey, light abiding its fatal fall into the shadeless night.
When Seven's first tear fell, it came in silence, went in silence; unacknowledged by either of them. Could a thing ever really be said to exist if its existence made no mark, no memory?

"So tell me, Draco, if I took away every memory you've ever had of Mara and made it so it was as if she never even existed, would you call it mercy?" They both knew he wouldn't.

Eyes firmly set anywhere but her, he watched the rain crawl down the window pane, "I'd never forgive you."

The words came as a whisper, a quiet curse, so underlaid with hate at even the thought of such a crime. Those memories were his most sacred possession.

Years of grief resurfaced, two years of buried feelings finally fighting to be felt. Seven's voice broke as she spoke, "Do you know what one of the final letters said..."
Of course he did — he'd read them himself after all. The first time she had ever laid eyes on him, when he'd been a stranger sat at the end of her bed, flicking through her most prized possessions.

"It said 'I'll never stop looking for you, know that. One day we'll find one another again, be it in this life or the next.'" Seven's voice became pleading; hopeful, "I'm still waiting, Draco. In this life or the next, I know I'll see them again, I just hope they're still waiting for me too."

"They are." The bed dipped as Draco finally moved to sit beside her.

She stared up at him, eyes wide and full of childish naivety that had no place in this wicked world, "You really think?"

"I know," The small smile that spread across his lips was sad; a bitter tragedy that something so beautiful could represent such sorrow, "Because I would wait forever for you.'

No matter how strong Seven thought that she was, how impenetrable she built her walls to be, Draco always seemed to find a way through. He was the only one that could hurt her twice, and he had, more times than she would ever dare to count. He made her a fool, made her bleed, made her kill, made her cry, but worst of all — his most inhumane cruelty was that he made her love him with no offer of anything in return. He weakened her in ways no other man could. All he had ever done was cause her pain, and yet, she clung to him, dreamt of him, wished for a world where she could have been together with him.
And so when at last he kissed her, she took all he would give and prayed for more. Their grief joined them, but somehow, it also held them apart. They understood one another, yet with all the lies and secrets they each held between them they knew each other no more than strangers on the street.

His hands were unabashed, certain and possessive as they found their way across the back of her neck, balling in the thick lengths of her hair. Holding her to him. Two mismatched halves of a disassembled whole, so dissonant and wrong, and yet, more right than any match could ever be.

His mouth tore from hers, lowering her slowly to the bed as his lips explored every inch of available skin they could, "I need you, Seven," An admittance, moment-fuelled and heart-drunk, "More than I've ever needed anything."

Clothes became scarce, layers removed until nothing else remained but them and their inebriated words. Seven pulled him up, banishing his lips with her hands on his face. She stared him in the eyes for any semblance of dishonesty or his usual mind games. To her surprise there was none to be found, instead, vulnerability looked back at her.

Seven brushed away a stray strand of moon-kissed hair that had fallen over his eyes, "Then you have me."

• • •

SOMETHING CHANGED THEN, a dam had broken, a switch had flipped. Resolve dissolved, dissipating into little more than a word as they came together, a blasphemous symphony of ill-reformed sinners and their immoral lust.

Draco knew he was wrong; in almost all things, his actions towards Seven had been worse than unforgivable. But he also did not believe in a hell, though at times he found himself wishing for one, believing that it was the only true place that an eternity could ever begin to rectify his long list of wrongdoings. He thought his punishment had been condemning himself to a life without Mara, but he was wrong, it was living a life with Seven — a short and unbecoming life that would one day come to the cruellest of ends.

He longed for atonement, and so he found it in her, in her forgiveness and her foolishness. Draco knew she loved him, in fact, he had known it for a while. The thought made him uneasy, what with the end looming ever closer.

So instead, he sought his cause, made vows to her she would never know, revered her in ways she would not believe. Draco found his sanctity, lowering himself between her thighs as she watched on in anxious anticipation. Love did not extend to trust, she still feared him somewhat, though she would never admit it.
He said his prayers there, between her thighs, basking in his newfound house of the holy. Seven bucked and squirmed as he worshipped, holding her down and forcing her to listen. He did not speak in words, god knows he was never too good with those. Actions were his favourite sense of fortitude.

And although Draco had never thought himself a particularly pious man, instead, he had always cursed those gods — the ones that had abandoned them when they needed them most — now, he found religion in her, venerating her until she cried out, calling his name. The most beautiful sound he had ever heard. No one said it quite like her, and hers was the only tongue he wanted to hear it from for the rest of forever, after all, that is how long he had vowed to wait.

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The full, extended smut version of this chapter will be available in the Fallout paperbacks when they release!
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