King's Pawn

A/N: I didn’t actually write this vignette, it wrote itself. In all seriousness, I never intended for this to become a full work, but it was as if it tore the pen from my hand and finished it on its own. It wouldn’t let me stop, it was very...strange. Either way, here you have it.

-MM-

They are so different, the two of them. So very different, and still they are exactly the same. I remember them both so clearly, and well I should. It’s only been a day since the last time I was shuttled back and forth between their whims. Look at me now. This is what I’ve become, a lapdog, a gopher, a mule. I know my purpose here, even if they choose to blind themselves to the truth.

I serve both the dark and the light, cool silk and warm wool. They are the antithesis of the other, and I the bridge that spans the broken chasm between.

One ordains I call him Lord, Master. Me he pretends to call loyal, dog, whatever amuses him most. He can kill with words, this one of the barbed tongue. He can spit fire, acid and bolts made to harm, to hurt, to kill. I do not care. I kneel at his feet in the dirt like an animal as I receive his hellish benediction.

"Severus...why do you continue to serve me so? Why haven't you gone back to the nest like the others, away from the pain and the terror? Why do you continue to grovel before me, humiliate yourself at my command, when you could be with those who would take you in, shelter you, give you warmth and love?"

Because I am like the dog that is kicked and returns to the Master for more of the same. Because I can no longer even conceive of the notion of leaving, so firmly am I bound to the headstone of my Master with silver chains. "Because I belong to you, my Lord, my Master."

"Indeed you do, my pet, indeed you do." There is the caress of the wand over my cheek that is so like the kiss of a lover I want to weep. The marble floor has been washed a score of times with my tears as I knelt here so many times in a lifetime of unforced servitude. The darkened tiles have known my pain, my exquisite agony more than any living being could.

Unwillingly given though my life may have been to this beautiful madman, I cannot take it back though it be handed to me time and time again. His blood is my blood, his will is mine. We have become one soul in two bodies, his soul. Mine was burned away lifetimes ago.

"Do you know, dearheart, what brought you to me?"

The names, the titles he gives to me. It pleases him to think of me as equal, a cherished pet to be loved and cared for. Yet we both know I am neither the treasured pet or the beaten dog, instead I am the lamb to be offered up for sacrifice again and again, burned for the cause of the greater good a thousand times before rest. Yet what of my greater good?

"You were brought here by the blood that runs through your veins, the very soul that resides hiding in that broken body of yours. It was written long before us both, before the sea rolled and the mountains rose it was written. Your soul was marked, dear Severus, and it was written you would come to me and that we would achieve much together." His words are honeyed poison as they fill my ears and block out the sounds of sanity that are the only things that could save me now.

A cold finger traces down my jawbone, brushing the skin. It frightens me, as it is intended to, that this hand could be so feather light upon my face and change in a heartbeat to the cruel spider grip that haunts my dreams. He tilts my head up and stares me in the eye, those cruel, beautiful eyes stripping me bare down to soul and mind, shedding both clothing and flesh in its wake.

"Tell me why you are here, Severus."

It is a game he plays, nothing more. I do not know whether it is the words he desires to hear or if he delights simply in making me say them, I do not know and I do not question. "Because I am yours. Heart, body, mind and soul I am your child."

His voice is brocade across my thoughts. The voice that has the power to turn the most cruel words into a lullaby of silver chimes and iron bells. Somewhere from breath to ear his voice becomes something never meant to be heard- it could rend buildings and level cities with its resonance, it has the power to make a strong man weep at the beauty of death. It is the height of cruelty that this voice brings the pain of ten thousand generations into this one broken body. It turns the word that should inspire terror into a song of mercury and cold glass, of phoenix tears and thestral wings.

"Crucio."

The other asks that I call him father, friend. The lies slip more easily from his tongue than my Master of shadow and ebony, for easy rests the mind that lies and knows not that it lies. He doesn't see the truth of the situation as I do, for I have long since ceased to fool myself with pleasant facades and idyllic half truths. It amuses him to play me as much as it does my Lord yet he still believe his acts to be truths.

"Tell me, Severus, why do you continue to play this dangerous game for us? Why haven't you backed out from the danger and the risk? Why do you continue to act both sides, to risk your life at my command, when you could be elsewhere, safe from him, without those who would use you?"

Because everyone uses me, no matter where I go. Because I have been manipulated for so long I don't know if I would be able to survive on my own. "Because it is the right thing to do, Professor."

"Indeed it is, Severus. Indeed it is." Every time I feel his gaze rest on my world weary body I shudder, wondering if he knows the truth. Wondering if he would tell me what the truth is. I have spent too many hours, days, weeks in a hospital bed as Albus supervised the stitching of my battered body back to health. When I recover, he thinks he sends me back out for it to happen again. Perhaps he even feels guilty about it. But I know the truth. It isn't he who sends me back to the man I call Lord, but myself. I go back willingly, knowing I am to be torn apart again, yet it is the role I chose to play and I will not break the vows I gave.

He doesn't see, the old fool, how he is using me in every way except where he is convinced he is. The irony is salt sharp and sweet, I savor the taste before it fades away into nothingness. He lies awake at nights, staring at his ceiling and wondering why he must send me back time and time again into what he believe for me is living hell. Yet he believe truly that I came to him of mine own will, that I sought him out to take up the task I now carry. He misses the fact that he is using me like a tool too valuable to let sit idle, and that I go back willingly to humble myself before my Lord and Master; instead he wonders how many more I will live through even as I wonder how many more before I may die.

"Do you know, Severus, why you were brought here?"

These mind games bored me, Albus. Why must you insist that there is something about me I'm not telling, why do you suspect me of hidden motives, of wheels turning within wheels? What would you do if you discovered them? If, I say if, not when, for in this again you are mistaken. I have no hidden agendas, I keep no secrets from you that I do not keep from myself. Secrets I have yet to ferret out, ones that I shied from because I fear what I will find.

"You were brought here because you were the only one who was able to get close to Voldemort, and you knew it. You came to me because you could not live with the knowledge that you were the only one who could help and do nothing about it. From the day you were born, Severus, there was never a doubt you would come to me. There was a place in your heart that belonged with us, on this side. You could never have been a true Death Eater, Severus, because of that good in you, the same good that brings you here, to risk your life every night for the sake of a better future."

What of my future, Albus? Why is it that I must build a better life for others at the expense of my own? If I die in this endeavour, how long will they honor me before my memory is banished to the darkness of oblivion?

The chessboard before us is alive with potential, as each piece waits to be deployed. No enchantments on this set, each piece of carved ivory and obsidian must be moved by human hands. Albus picks up a pawn, the one stationed directly in front of the king.

"King's pawn, Severus. Considered in chess to be one of the most important and dangerous pieces in the beginning of the game. Always kept close to protect its ruler, the king. Almost always the first to be moved and almost always the first to be destroyed."

There is something soothing about the cool stone pieces. They become more than chessmen as the game progresses, they become personalities of their own as they glide across the marble board. I can almost hear the sounds of battle as their war begins to mute the silent struggle that lives inside me every waking hour. For a moment, for that single game, I am not the one who obeys orders, I am the one who gives them. I manipulate the pieces even as I am manipulated by the man I call Master and the man I call friend. They are the same person, even if they don't know it yet.

Finally I move into a square occupied by his pawn, taking possession of my new territory with a single, lonely knight. My black knight, one of the few pieces left to me from his savage slaughter of my side. I roll the pawn around in my hand, still bent and stiff from the ministrations of my Lord, and gaze at the board. His king now stands alone and unprotected two squares to the right of its starting square, one row back from the pawn I took. The pawn was the only piece that had not moved that game, it had not moved a single square from its starting position in front of its leader the king. King's pawn.

I looked at Albus and felt a smile stretch my lips as he sighed in resignation and tipped his king on its side. I watched as it rolled across the board, coming to rest at the foot of its defeater, the one lonely horse that took both king and king's pawn in its short life.

"Checkmate."