Next chapter at 300 comments! Dedicated to mcg20116975

"YOU CAN'T KEEP ignoring me forever." He said softly, lingering in the shadows of the balcony, away from the railing; away from her.
She didn't look at him, perhaps couldn't bear too. Seven knew that feeling all too well, too many times his actions had been too terrible to face, and she'd been scared to look, scared of which version of him she might see.
Draco's brows knit together, desperate for her to hear him, "Just say something, please... Say anything,"

The memory had a strange quality to it, almost like watching through an old television, the vision oddly blurred and the sound far more robotic than usual.
Seven stood shackled to the spot by invisible ties, an outsider watching in. She could tell Draco had restricted her access to this memory, making to sure to show her only as much as he could dare to share.

  "...You lied to me." Mara said at last, but her voice came out small and affected, as if blurred by static, the memory faltering, warping with yet another of Draco's restrictions.

  "Then tell me what to say, just tell me what I can do to fix this." Draco's eyes shone with  a sadness he had never shown to anyone but himself, "— I'll do whatever it takes, I'll do anything, Mara please, I need you..."

Mara sighed, her head dipping with something almost akin to a sob, "I know."

  "What more do you want from me?... Mara you're breaking me," No walls remained to protect Draco from the full flush of his grief, and here he was, begging, pleading for forgiveness like he'd never once done for Seven. "— I don't know what to do other than to say I'm sorry..."

It became clear that Mara was crying the next time she spoke, "Sorry's just a word Draco."

  He finally moved to stand beside her at the railing, but cautiously, like he was worried she would run from him.
They were quiet for a long time, and for a while Seven feared that was it, they would never speak again; damned to stare out over that endless blackness beyond for all eternity.
Only the wind would serve to soothe the jagged edges of the broken, fractured spaces between them. Seven wondered what Draco had done to tear the two of them apart in such a way, such so that even Mara could not forgive him.

"You know I love you." He said so quietly Seven almost missed it, she wished she had, "I always have."

Seven closed her eyes, allowing herself a brief moment to pretend that it was her he'd said those words to — that he loved her.

Mara's whisper died almost as soon as it was born, carried off by the wind, "...I know."

  "So what? That's it?" Draco stared hopelessly down at his hands, knuckled bruised and split, stained with blood that was not his own, "— Are we just done talking? ...Is this really where this ends?"

Another long silence, stretching out like a noose, waiting and waiting and waiting for something to drop. Was this how it had fallen apart in the end?

  "Swear to me..." Mara's voice shook with the weight of her words, each sounding like a stone in her chest, "— Swear that you'll never lie to me like that again... If you do, I'm gone, you will never see me again."

He didn't hesitate. "I swear."
  Never one to stay, Draco then pushed away from the railing, moving to leave, but soon stopped at the sound of her voice, "Don't go... Stay with me, just for a little while."

  He didn't need her to asked twice, after all, he would have done anything for her — it was clear to see, even to an outsider like Seven. The thought made her bitter, hateful for a dead girl she had never even known. Why couldn't it have been her.

  "...I love you." Mara's words were a killing strike, a dagger to Seven's chest.

  Draco shifted closer, covering her small hand in his. "I know."

Seven wanted to fall to her knees, to throw her hands into the earth and call up some great natural disaster to shatter the earth between them — she wanted to tear them apart — to make Draco forget all about her. She wanted to rip Mara from every crag and plane of his mind and fill all those aching voids with memories of her instead.

He could've loved her. He would've, if only she had been there first. But now she could see, clear as day, there was no room for loving her, not when, even now, all those years later, Mara still stole his every waking thought.

  Music floated through the air, light and melodic and yet it weighed over Seven like some terrible storm cloud. She knew the song, knew what came next. She could feel it in her bones. It had been so long since she'd heard it, all those months ago in Greed — back when her and Draco had been so fresh and strange to one another. He had asked her to dance, that night on the balcony, that night he'd first kissed her. That night he had first told her about Mara, his fiancé.

  Draco turned to Mara, eyes mellow as the moon above them, "Dance with me?"

• • •

"COME BACK TO me."
  Seven had not realised the memory had ended until she felt his hand, a tender touch of her face, far too gentle for such a hardy man.
  Seven's eyes flickered up to his, and at once his hand fell away from her cheek. Draco stepped back, like that was something she was never meant to see.

  "I'm sorry," Seven said quietly, guilt curling around her midsection.

Draco's brows knit together. He hesitated, looking torn, "For what?"

She tried to keep it together, really she did, "For making you relive that, for prying, for everything."
But then the first tear fell, and after that, more followed. Seven turned away, not wanting Draco to see her cry, but he grabbed her by the shoulders and the next thing she knew her head was buried in his chest.

Seven had never once felt complete, fractured and half-missing as she was, but there, in Draco's arms, she felt something close to whole.

"You don't ever have to apologise to me, Seven." His hands wound in her hair, his head resting atop hers, holding her so tightly she wondered who the embrace was saving. They were both fractured, sharp, fragmented shards of what they once were, though together, their harsh edges seemed less so. Glass could not cut glass, but it could offer more broken pieces to create one whole, an imperfect whole, but whole nonetheless.

His voice was the ghost of a promise, like the last wisp of winter finally melting away to reveal all the places that life could be, "I don't think I'll ever be capable of love again after Mara..." He said slowly, struggling over the words like they pained him to say, "But if I was, I would want it to be you, Seven." It would've been kinder for him to kill her, anything would've been better than this — this was the cruelest fate of all. "I've always wanted it to be you."

***
QOTD- Do you think Draco will ever move on? Do you even want him to move on?