Break

Break--Chapter 5

by cyanide blue

There's a light clink on the stone floor. Percy wakes quickly, his eyes snapping open, his heart racing.

"Wake up, Weasley," someone says. "Food."

Percy looks up. It's Zabini. He looks at Percy, Percy looks back. There's a scraping sound and the edge of a bowl nudges against Percy's knee as Zabini attempts in vain to get a response. Percy looks down to see a bowl of watery, lukewarm vegetable soup.

"Lucius said to feed everyone, so hop to, sir yes sir, here I am." He sits, watching Percy. "Between you and me, this is shite. I ought to be doing something useful. I'm intelligent. This is a waste of my time." He shrugs. "Then again, I'm on the winning side, that's what's important."

Percy takes the bowl into his hands and cautiously sips. He lowers his eyes demurely, feeling Zabini's eyes on him still.

"This can't be the first time you've been fed here," he says eventually. "When was the last, I wonder?"

Percy doesn't respond, drinking down the broth of the soup feverishly, a little spilling down his chin. He sets the bowl down on his knee, and starts to pick the vegetables out of the drained bowl. Chewing is strange. He can't recall the last time he chewed.

"I get the feeling that you're pulling something, Weasley," Zabini says. "That you're waiting for an opportune moment and then you'll use some sort of master plan. People like you and me, we don't give in. We may surrender but an enemy would be a fool not to expect a retaliation."

Percy shrugs.

"Nothing to say?" Zabini says, a little amused. "Nothing at all? I can't say I'm surprised by any means, but it is a little strange, you know."

"What do you want me to say?" Percy says. He picks a carrot from the bowl and chews it thoughtfully.

Zabini looks relieved that Percy has seemingly not gone mad, or mute. "About Flint," he says. "You'd do best to resist now, if ever, because he's... oddly attached to you, Weasley. He's really got something for you... or against you. If he finds you're indulging him because you fear death at his hands--though I can't imagine he'd be stupid enough to expect otherwise--he'll take it personally and the longer you fool him, the worse it'll be."

Percy tilts his head to the side. "Kill myself sooner rather than later, is what you're saying."

"Flint is better at torture than you'd think. You're just lucky that he's sticking to fucking up your head. Don't make it worse."

"And why should I trust my enemy?"

"You should trust me because, as you say, I'm not much better off than you and there's no real gain for me in steering you wrong."

"There's no real gain for you in steering me right, either," Percy points out.

Zabini shrugs. "I suppose not. Trust me if you will." He pauses. "...Tell me something."

"Why?"

"Just do it, all right?"

"Fine."

"Do you care? Are you just going to indulge him in hopes he might let you go, or are you indulging him because you want to, or do you care at all?"

"Why?"

Zabini is exasperated by the repetition. "Why what?"

"Why are you asking?" He suddenly recalls his original aim, to set Zabini and Flint against one another, and there's a startling moment of emptiness, of apathy, when he realizes it doesn't seem to matter anymore.

"Call it the result of ennui. It's this or feed the rest of you lot. You happen to be slightly interesting."

"Am I?" No one has ever found Percy interesting, excepting Penelope, of course. He is dry, practical, cautious.

"...I suppose that's why I'm helping you. Or trying, as much as I can. You are--were what I aspired to be, before all this. Not because of you, but because I was meant to become the Minister." Zabini laughs. "Technically you're the Minister, did you realize that? If there was a Ministry, anyway."

Percy isn't sure if this is a good thing.

"You never answered my question," Zabini says. "What are you going to do?"

Percy tests the weight of the bowl in his hands, and the image of broken crockery on that Muggle's kitchen floor flashes into his head again.

Drop the bowl, it'll break, grab a broken piece and stab him. It's not that hard

, a voice within him insists, reasonably.

He looks up to see Zabini staring at him, bewildered, again. "Stop drifting off like that," he says. "Though I suppose that pig of a mother never taught you or the other squalling Weasley brats a bit of manners."

Percy opens his mouth to snap at that, annoyed, but he hears the sound of the door unlocking. Zabini, hearing it too, has the good sense to stand and away from Percy, in case it's Flint.

It's--ohgod--Bellatrix Lestrange again. Percy stiffens, pressing himself back against the wall. "Weasley," she says in a singsong. "Ickle Weasley, I have a present."

He doesn't take his eyes off of her, though he finds her to be a horror, a twisted nightmarish figure made worse by the thought that she may have once been beautiful. The smile on her face is far too wide and unrestrained to mean anything good for him.

"Well, get on with it," Zabini says. "Suspense is extraneous."

Bellatrix shoots Zabini a withering look, then beckons someone in. It's Rodolphus, dragging a limp body in tow. Percy's stomach turns. It would be just like them... just like them to torture someone in front of him. He starts to shake, and he suddenly wishes he'd attacked Zabini before... then maybe he would be free, now.

You're such a fool, Percival. You're such a fool.

He releases his breath in a sharp, shuddering sigh as Rodolphus shoves the limp body at him. He sees a quick glimpse of tattered dark curls before he scrambles up and catches her as best he can, slumping to the ground with her weight on top of him.

It's her.

How did they know? How could they know? Flint. Of course. Bastard.

She's unconscious but her lips are parted slightly, her face so pale he fears she might not be breathing--but to see her again, if she's not dead, to apologize, to make her understand what he feared--he'd give anything, anything for that to happen.

He brushes her hair out of her face, lies her gently down onto the floor, strokes her cheek. There's a lump in his throat as he looks at her, considers all the sins he's done since last he's seen her.

She's an angel, oh god, she always has been.

He nearly bursts into tears right there, pathetic tears of regret, as trite as it is, when suddenly one of the people watching pins him against a wall with a simple spell. He sniffles uselessly, staring up from Zabini to Bellatrix, who is sneering.

"You're pathetic," she says.

He very nearly agrees.

"You ought to beg for your life," she says. "Or hers."

"Take me," he says. "Not her."

"How noble," Rodolphus says, and the word is not a compliment.

"I don't care what you think of me," Percy says. "Just don't touch her, don't bloody touch her."

"No one is untouched by this war, Weasley," Zabini says quietly.

"Don't you dare touch her," he says once more, then sinks into his restraints, closing his eyes tightly, tears coursing down his face.

Bellatrix wanders over--he refuses to look up--and he sees the dark curls of hair that lie on the floor move. He looks up to see Bellatrix lifting the unconscious girl's head. "My love, wake her," she calls to Rodolphus, who obediently comes over and obeys.

"No," Percy whispers, but he's powerless.

Zabini sighs, but it's impossible to tell whether the disgust that lies within the sigh is for him or for the behavior of the two Death Eaters. He leaves, and Percy watches him go, fearing the loss of a kindred spirit.

There's a murmur, and she's awake.

"Mudblood," Bellatrix whispers in a low voice--almost sultry, if he didn't know she was a madwoman. "Open your eyes, Mudblood."

She opens her eyes--clear blue just as he remembers them--oh god, Penelope, he loves her, it's never been clearer than now...

Bellatrix nods to Rodolphus, who presses his wand into her throat. "Open your mouth," he says. Her eyes widen, and she obeys. He dumps the contents of a vial down her throat.

Her eyes go dull. Percy prays--to who, to what? What is there left anymore?--that she isn't dead.

"Tell us everything you saw," Bellatrix says. She looks back at Percy, eyebrow cocked in amusement. "Watch carefully. You're next."