MonochromeBright

The door shuts, and there is darkness. It closes around him in a cold embrace of welcome, sliding over exposed skin like contamination and bringing up memories that have long fought hard to gain the surface. He shudders, pulling his cloak tighter about him. His eyes adjust to the black. They remember it like one remembers an old friend. They are ready for it, but he will not linger long. He is there for one reason, and that reason shifts abruptly in the dark, making a low guttural sound of surprise, his nails scraping uncomfortably against stone in an attempt to stand.

"Sit down," Severus says, but he struggles to his feet anyway, breathing hard.

"What are you doing here?" he asks, and Severus can still hear the languid, cultured notes in a once smooth voice, now haggard with disuse. "I told you not to come, Severus."

"When have you ever told me to do, or not to do anything, Lucius?"

"Not often enough, obviously." He laughs softly. It is a frightening sound, without emotion of any kind. "I'm sorry I don't have proper accommodations for you Severus. As you can no doubt see, the supplies are somewhat limited. If you intend to stay and patronize me some more though, I advise you to sit down, if you don't mind wallowing in my filth, that is."

"Self-pity doesn't suit you Lucius," Severus replies curtly, sitting slowly on the cot in the corner. "I suggest you give your pretty head a good shake. You'll give yourself wrinkles, otherwise."

Another dejected laugh. It rings solemnly around the dank cell like the memory of things better forgotten. He shifts again, coughing, and Severus can not help but feel a twinge of something that might be pity flash through him. Above them, the heavy clouds finally drift away, and the weak moonlight filters down through the bars in the ceiling, casting a dim twilight around the room. Severus watches him scuttle away from it, pulling the ragged strips of his robe after him. He sees a flash of familiar white-blonde hair before he is once again consumed by the shadows.

"I don't want you to see me," he says hoarsely in explanation, and Severus laughs hollowly.

"Why not?" he asks.

"I wouldn't want dear Severus to go running back to Dumbledore with lovely tales of the thing Lucius Malfoy has become," he says mockingly, coughing again.

"Well, you know I wouldn't."

"Yes, you would."

Severus stands abruptly, striding blindly into the corner where he knows he is standing. He halts just before him, and he can vaguely see the outline of his hard-edged face.

"Is it too much for you to think that I'm not here on Dumbledore's orders?" he asks harshly, taking hold of one thin wrist. The skin is cold and clammy. He remembers when it had once burned with passion and feels a jolt of fury at its loss. "What if I just wanted to see you?"

"And why would that be?" he asks in return, his voice like a blast of icy wind.

Severus tilts his head slightly to the side. "I have my reasons," he says.

Without warning, what meager strength has kept him up vanishes and he falls to the ground, pulling Severus down with him. They land hard against the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. Severus finds himself pressed up against the skin of Lucius' neck, and feels lank hair brush across his face like a despairing caress. Lucius turns to stone in his embrace, trying frantically to pull away. Severus halts his weak progress with just a hand on his shoulder.

"Fuck you, Severus."

"No thank-you. I'm rather not in the mood."

Lucius gives another weak pull, then stops, sighing heavily. The moonlight now falls across his face, illuminating his faintly sunken features and making his dusky gray eyes burn. Somehow, even after six months in Azkaban, he's managed to retain traces of his former impossible beauty. It is still a pitying sight, to see a man that had once been so powerful and mighty, reduced to a scuttling captive afraid to be seen by those who knew him as something different. Again, like many times before, Severus wonders what he might have been, what they might have been if not for Voldemort. They'd been children. Children aren't supposed to make such devastating decisions.

The heavy silence is broken by a disgusted puff of air.

"Look at me," Lucius mutters, halfheartedly pulling at his tattered robes and stringy hair. "Look at me, Severus, and don't tell me that you see no difference."

"Why does that have to matter?" His voice is not his own. Severus cannot remember the last time he talked without a strain of venom colouring his words. The anger is there, sure enough, but not the acid. Lucius freezes in his embrace again, though it is a different stillness. He knows that Lucius remembers when words were spoken without bitterness, without pain.

"Do you remember what I told you when you received the Mark?" Lucius asks softly, though not without hardness.

Severus shudders, but only inwardly. He won't reveal his hand, not even to Lucius. Not while the war is young and there is much yet to be done.

"Yes, of course." He does remember, though it is not a happy memory. He releases Lucius' hand from his grip, and he rubs it absently, his smoky gaze fixed on a point above Severus' shoulder.

"Why didn't you tell me then that I was being foolish? Why didn't you tell me that I was doing nothing but feeding you lies? Look how far those lies have brought you, Severus. A higher power must like you, to make you see my lies for what they were, but clearly not enough."

Severus feels as if an icy hand has clamped itself around his heart.

"What do you mean?" he asks, fear creeping up behind him like a specter. "What lies?"

Lucius is suddenly halfway across the room, his face burning with anger, his eyes flashing dangerously. Severus knows what it means when his eyes flash. He's either furious with someone else, himself, or he's in a mood to fuck Severus until he screams. He's fairly sure the last is not the cause this time, though there was a point in the past when it would have been three times out of six.

"What lies?" he shrieks hoarsely, throwing his arms out in wild question. "What lies?"

Severus has never seen him so hysterical in all the time that he's known him. It makes him shiver, and he takes a step back to distance himself, to regain his composure. Lucius follows him, grabbing his shoulders roughly with hands that have become rail thin, skeleton digits. His eyes are wild, and for a moment Severus wonders if he's slightly mad.

"Why am I a monster?" he rasps, desperation colouring his words. "Why do I revel in the sound of a neck cracking? Why do I laugh when others scream for mercy? Why do I take pleasure in the feeling of another's blood on my hands?"

"I don't know," Severus says softly, and it's true. He doesn't know. He asks himself the same question every time memories of the past creep up on him uninvited, and he thinks he might never know the answer. "Why are you asking me?"

Lucius laughs hollowly, and its sound rings forlornly in the gloom of the cell.

"When you have no one but yourself for company, it's pleasant to have a different opinion once in a while." The emptiness of his voice makes Severus shudder. "When you're in a place like this, and you still have all your memories at the end of the day, it becomes terribly clear that there's something wrong with you. When you have no good memories to steal, it is impossible to ignore the knowledge that this must make you an evil man beyond question."

At this point, Lucius reaches instinctively into the folds of Severus' robe with the familiarity of ritual, pulling out an elegant dagger and holding it up almost reverently to the weak light. The milky cast of the moon dances along the spotless steel like a lover's caress, gleaming on the slightly curved tip and the priceless emeralds on the hilt, their sparkling bodies placed securely in the hold of jade shot with ivory. A truly beautiful piece of magical creation, spells for more than just killing lying dormant within the adamantine shimmer of the blade, and memory makes Lucius draw in an awe-filled gasp. His dusky eyes fix themselves on Severus' now shuttered face, releasing the breath hastily taken.

"You kept it," he says simply, and Severus thinks he can hear a gratitude in Lucius' voice that he has never associated with him before. It makes his neck tingle, though his expression does not alter. Lucius seems surprised, as if he didn't really believe it would be there, tucked safely in its sheath around Severus' waist.

"Of course. Why wouldn't I?" He finds himself looking away from the gaze he knows too well, a slight heat suffusing his pallid skin. His hands are trembling, hidden under the long sleeves of his robe, and he clenches his fingers to stop them. "I could hardly have let those blithering Ministry idiots lay their dirty hands on it."

His mention of the Ministry brings Lucius back to earth with jarring impact, and the light in his eyes disappears with an alarming rapidity, dying like a candle quickly snuffed. He looks know at the dagger as if it were his only chance for release, and Severus is already far too familiar with the hopeless, hollow picture that is Lucius' face to know it was more than definitely a ill decision to bring that dagger here.

"Do you ever wish that we could go into the past and change all our foolish choices?"

Lucius leans back against the conspicuously stained wall behind him, suddenly weary beyond reason, hands hanging limply at his sides, dagger held lightly in one palm. The cell around them seems to rejoice at Lucius' abrupt collapse, and Severus wonders if it's just his imagination that he feels the telltale pall of cold whisper across his nape.

He shakes his head almost immediately in response to Lucius' somewhat off-hand question, shuffling his feet to restore circulation in the numb extremities.

"No, I don't, because while I know it is not impossible, the act seems like a breaking of the rules, a loophole that should never have been. It is the burden of man to live with his actions, and we have let ourselves grow dependent on this quick-fix solution. If we are to one day be without the option, what will we do then?"

Lucius smiles, a rare sight on his emotionless face, and Severus chest aches to see it, though he knows not why.

"I should have known you'd say something like that," Lucius says softly, though his words are still cold as bitter winter. He cannot speak in any other way, drowned as he is in despairing thoughts and memories. Severus takes a deep breath and exhales, already feeling as if this might be the last time he will ever see Lucius again. He doesn't know why. He wants to cling to it, refuse to let go, and even though he can see how childish such thoughts are he hardly cares, because he never had the chance to be a child.

Hardly knowing himself, Severus moves forward, eyes full of surrender, and embraces Lucius, pulling the once lean, now too thin body close to his own. To him the moment is surreal. He's lost count of the times he wished Lucius would suddenly awake from Voldemort's thrall and be the man that he could have been, if not for the path to hell they both walked with thoughtlessness and abandon. To have him question his decisions now, to realize the depth of his depravity, the sucking whirlpool of death and destruction that he had welcomed with open arms, made Severus' head light. To have his wish suddenly granted, here, in this place, when there is no chance for the life he'd wanted, is to him the cruelest of all punishments he's forced himself to endure in atonement for his own crimes.

"I'm so sorry, Severus. I'm so, bloody sorry." Lucius' voice is warm against his ear, cracked and broken. His lips are pressed against Severus' jaw, and his jumbled mind is so caught up in the sensation that he does not notice when Lucius places the dagger back in his hand, curling Severus' hands around the hilt tenderly, his own held fast over them. And then Lucius is kissing him, kissing him like they did that night Severus came back to the Slytherin Common Room bruised and bloody, shaking and trembling as if he might never stop, his eyes wide with fear. Through Lucius' careful ministrations he'd somehow managed to say what it was that had happened, and soon after they were tangled in the chair, mouths working against each other and hands roaming. It is the same now, though they are older, more experienced, and Severus can't help himself from moaning when Lucius pulls away, his gray eyes burning.

"I'm so sorry," he says again, and then reaches forward and clasps the hand he released, the hand still holding tight the elegant dagger. He reaches forward and before anything can be said or done, before Severus can open his mouth to whisper words he's never spoken, Lucius takes Severus' hand and guides it, driving the blade hard and deep into himself. He twists it roughly, and a strangled cry escapes his perfect lips, the sound of it ringing obscenely around the cell and in Severus' ears like a siren call. The pale, long fingered hand drops away and his body falls, the dagger sliding out of him with the sickening sound of flesh tearing. He lands hard on the cold, disgusting floor, beautiful white blonde hair spilling about him, and his eyes already begin to grow distant, hazing like clouds obscuring the sun.

Severus sees it all as if through a dream. He feels detached, not a part of himself, watching the scene unfold from some place high in the sky. His fingers are numb, and he uncurls them slowly, letting the dagger drop to the ground. The sound as it strikes stone is like the final toll of death. He stares at Lucius' painfully beautiful face and his heart shatters, exploding into a million little pieces that tear and rip at his insides. He falls to his knees, cares not for the white-hot pain that shoots up his legs, trembling hands hovering wraith like above the still figure.

There is an inhuman shriek from outside the room, and Severus can suddenly feel the world around him growing dark, can almost see swirls of mist and fog wisping under the door and then billowing in as it is thrown open. He can hear in his mind the last words Lucius would ever say to him, "I'm so sorry," and he doesn't try to block them out. He wants them to echo forever inside him, to never lose their clarity and profound simplicity. He wants to sit forever in this cell, this indiscriminate, life-stealing cell with Lucius' head in his lap and his hands touching, one tangled in sun-kissed hair, the other lying still along the curve of his perfect jaw.

But he knows this will never be for him to have, or want, and when putrid, rotting fingers hold his face in a macabre of the one he wishes for and gently pulls apart unyielding lips, he does not struggle. He does, after all, have nothing to live for, however maudlin it sounds.

His greatest dream has been granted, to be given a glimpse, however cruel, of life without blood and murder, and eternity is waiting for him.

And when his soul is sucked from the very depths of his being, pulled out with grasping, hungry digits, he can still feel the ghost of Lucius' lips against his own.

The world fades, and he has never felt so at peace.