Next chapter at 300 comments! Dedicated to Emily12252
TWs for content some may find extremely distressing.

SEVEN DID NOT wake when Draco began to carry her. Neither did she wake when he set her down. The world carried on around her, but still, Seven slept.

  It was not a restful sleep in the slightest, it was more than her body had simply failed her, so drained and weakened as it was. There is only so long a person could go on fighting for each and every waking moment.

  But when the time came that she finally did awake, the room was stiff, still, silent. The air was cloying, sickly sweet with the copper tang of blood. She could taste it too, thick and hard to swallow, as she dragged herself upright in the bed, gritting her teeth through the pain. Everything hurt.

  "Draco?" She asked tentatively; voice hoarse. No reply.

  Beneath her, the sheets were stained scarlet and dried blood stuck her hair to her skin.

  "Draco?" She called out again, a little louder this time. Still no response. Seven forced herself out of the bed, staggering on wounded limbs over to a pair of glass doors that led to a balcony and forcing them open. The air was cold, freezing even, biting at her bare skin.
She gulped down great, gasping breaths of clean air; grateful for the reprieve.
The streets below were deserted, and though the sun was nearing its peak in the sky, not a soul stirred beneath. The white stone buildings told Seven that she was still in Pride, albeit the outskirts judging by the lack of movement.

  She scanned the room, taking all she could — this was not just another hotel room, this was a home; lived in and fruitful. Oil paintings covered the walls, depicting everything from stary nights to that same tower building Draco had tattooed across his ribs, only now when Seven thought of it, a name came to her. The Astronomy Tower.

  There was a kitchen too, clean and simple, as well as a door to what Seven assumed was a bathroom — she had to assume because it was locked, and through it, she could hear the sound of a shower running.

  That must be where Draco is, she thought to herself, limping through the kitchen to a living room area, where she collapsed into an armchair.

  Seven braved a look down at her leg, the one that had been burnt and slashed, but to her surprise, she found both wounds already been bandaged and wrapped in several layers of thick white gauze. She peeled back a couple of layers of it, wincing as she did, just enough to see stitches.

  He had stitched her up too?

  Sure enough on the nightstand beside the bed, there was a medkit, needle and surgical thread included as well as a half-empty bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

  She waited there for him to finish in the shower, but half an hour later there was still no sign of him. A bad feeling gnawed in the pit of her stomach.

  "...Draco?" Seven called through the door, trying the handle again. Still locked. And it was then that she felt something. She looked down at the water seeping out from beneath the door, pooling around her toes.

"Shit!" She began pounding on it, "Draco! — Open the door!"

  No reply. She hit the wood harder, louder, until her knuckles bled and the door began to splinter. "Draco!" She threw herself against it. "Draco!" Blood mixed with the water at her feet, diluting it — blood that was not her own. "Draco!" She screamed now, throwing her entire body weight into the door again and again and again. When eventually it gave way Seven fell to the floor on the other side.

  Everything was red. Water flooded the bathroom, pouring out into the apartment beyond through the exit Seven had made.

  And he was there, slumped beneath the shower stream, whether unconscious or dead, Seven couldn't tell. A sob forced its way free of her lips as she collapsed beside him, the water raining down upon them both. "Draco..." Her bloody fingers trembled over his face, across his lips, his cheek, searching desperately for any signs of life. He didn't respond.

  Soaked through to the bone, his pale shirt clung to every curve and contour of his torso, but that wasn't what caught Seven's attention — instead, it was the great blossoming stripes of red that tore through the white.

  He was bleeding, badly.

  Her hands shook as she fumbled with the shirt buttons until at last, it came undone. Seven gasped, blanched back, horrified by what she saw.

  In her life time she'd seen more than her lifetimes worth of cruelty. She'd seen Harry Potter, dragged to shreds, until he was nothing more than a few tattered lumps of gore and bone. But this...
  Perhaps it wasn't even the garishness of it, perhaps it was only that it had happened to him — her Draco — that it made her so sick to her stomach.

  Or maybe, it was that among the fresh there were old wounds. Days, weeks, maybe even months old. How long had he been suffering alone?

  But deep down, she knew it was because they were all her fault. She had caused them all in some way or another, each and every last one of them. The worst of which, was also the oldest; a mess of blackened veins and dark red blood bruises surrounding what looked like a stab wound, inches from his heart and infected beyond belief.

  Had she not been the one to stab him in the chest?

  It felt like a thousand lifetimes ago now, but yes, she remembered she had, with her dagger — a remnant of the sword of Gryffindor.

  "Oh Draco," Tears streamed down her cheeks. She tried to will him back to life, "Why didn't you tell me..." His skin was cold to the touch, even despite the heat of the shower water. "Why didn't you tell me!" She cried, clutching at his ruined shirt, "You fucking idiot! I could've helped you!" Seven's voice broke as she shouted at him, as if he could hear her, as if he could respond, "Wake up! Wake up, please!" And then, at the stillness of his chest, she came undone, a desperate mess of salt and agony, "Draco, don't do this! Stay — you have to stay! Stay here — with me!"

There were several slashes across his stomach too, deep enough to see muscle, only these were fresh. Inflicted by his own father.

He had saved her before he'd saved himself — carried her home and stitched her up and then crawled off here to die. Draco had died alone.
She pulled his limp body close to her, rocked with it. She screamed, she cried, never knowing a pain like it. "Please! Oh God, Draco, please! Don't leave me! I —," Her breath caught in her throat, "— I can't do this without you!"

• • •

IN THE DAYS following those moments after were all a blur to Seven. She had no idea how long she had sat cradling Draco's corpse, begging him to come back to her. He never did. All she knew was that at some point she had dragged him to the bed, laid him there, beneath the covers, so that she could pretend he was only sleeping — and that at any moment he would wake.

She sat there for hours, watching as his face paled and his skin turned grey. Waiting, waiting, waiting. For what exactly, she wasn't sure. She didn't eat, didn't drink, didn't sleep. She didn't even cry anymore, only stared at the shell of what had once been a man. Sometimes she would lay beside him, place her head on his cold chest and listen until she could convince herself that the throbbing in her head was really a heartbeat.

That was better than admitting the truth.
Anything was better than admitting that she had killed him.

Seven found her bag amongst the rest of her things. Used every spell, every potion, anything and everything she could possibly think of. None of it worked. And soon, that smell of decay began to creep in.

The apartment lay in disarray around them, vases smashed, furniture broken, streaks of blood on the walls. She must have done that too, though she couldn't remember it, the glass cuts on arms and knuckles said otherwise.

Perhaps she was mad, in fact, she was almost certain of it. It didn't matter though, none of it did, not if he wasn't there to scold her for it. Seven liked to think of what he would say if he were there, horrid as it may have been, she would've taken it all the same.

It was at the beginning of the third day that the knock came. Three sharp raps, and at first, Seven thought she had imagined them, delirious as she was. When she opened the apartment door the hall beyond was empty, except for a package. It was small, barely half the size of a fist and had a note attached.

Seven picked it up and returned inside, and when she sat back on the bed beside Draco, she read the note aloud for him to hear, but stuffed the package into her pocket.

Draco & Seven

I'm sorry.
I figured you should have this.

— Navy

Draco and Seven. Seven and Draco. She stared at the names for a moment, and then tore the note in two. But that didn't feel like enough. Navy and her accomplices had abandoned them, left them to die — and Draco had.

Because of Seven. Because of Navy. Because of his father. Because of all of them.

Seven grabbed a lighter and set the scraps of note alight, watching with sickening glee as the flames lapped up the last of Navy's words, and enjoying the roaring pain as they fanned her fingers. This was the least she deserved.

She cried then too, for the first time since that first day. And once she started she couldn't stop. She wanted it to stop. All of it. She couldn't take it any longer. Couldn't live another second of it, another second without him.
It wouldn't be long now, she told herself, she was fading fast. Body growing tired, mind caving in.

***