Guiding Light || OC x Draco Malfoy

Chapter 18:

My body froze after jumping in shock with the reverberating slam of the closing door. Even with the wind blowing between myself and whoever had decided to join me, the tension was palpable and viscous. I couldn't muster up the courage to turn around and face whoever stood below me, but I was able to will myself up the final few inches of the ladder. The lattice-like grate that layed over top of a giant turbine hummed with energy beneath my feet.

Just able to make out the faint rattles of footsteps coming from below me, my heart began to pound irradically in time with their steps. Only a few feet away from the breach of the ladder, I was able to feel when the weight of another human began to slowly make its way upwards. Up to me. Every rung that brought this person closer to me was met with a step away from the opening. Counting up every time I felt the telling bump of ascension, I stoped when I got to 30, braving up and finally turning to face them. At thirty-four, a pair of hands—skin paler than milk— gripped the last bar. Lithe fingers and hands with visible tendons and bones helped to pull the man up.

Shocks of platinum white hair bristled out of their perfectly-styled form as the body attached to them rose to his feet. Expensive loafers polished like the diamonds eluded in his eyes slowly came closer to where I stood paralyzed in fear.

Except fear wasn't the right word for what I was feeling at this moment. Every ounce of confidence that I had been drowning in previously were now laying in shambles at my feet. I felt like a deflated balloon, and seeing him here in this moment felt like being filled back up with air and then immediately stuck with pins.

My chest felt like it was weighed down immensely, and it was more than just the embarrassment of the scene I had created. I tried as hard as I could to look anywhere but him, though the sights of stairwell windows brimming with flames made my eyes sting with emotional tears. The serenity of the meadows in the distance made me feel a conflicting mixture of longing, and also depressing guilt at the thought that I had wanted to destroy something so beautiful; that I still wanted to destroy it all.

It felt like everywhere I looked, it was just the demons of what I'd done. When my eyes shut out of defense so to shield me from the reality of what I'd done to St. James', all I saw was the same celestial projection of everyone that I had killed. Faces of people that I had loved in lifetimes before this, and ones that I would never get to know beyond a picture in an obituary and a fun little way to curb an urge or two.

Just like the last time these sleep paralysis-worthy specters payed me a visit, the faces and start all melted together into a fondue pot of features; all of which belonged to either myself or the man in front of me. Gasping and chocking with the realization of my true proximity to the person sharing the rooftop with me, I really had no choice but to open my eyes.

Shattered breaths rattled inside of my sternum as I tried fruitlessly to calm myself. My upper and lower waterlines slowly parted and the look of true affection and concern in the eyes of the man in front of me made the threateningly rising tears flood out of me. The five foot gap between us was closed within seconds as I threw myself to him, the droplets on my face soaking into his Prada button-down. A shallow gasp escaped him at the contact, and soon afterwards, uncharacteristicly strong arms wrapped around the circumference of my waist, the measure of which had been significantly decreased thanks to how poorly I had been maintained. My head nestled into the groove of his neck, the shape of which I found my face fitting perfectly into. His scent filled every missing part of me, but at the same time, the corrosive nature of him in general bunt new holes faster than he could fill them.

If irony is the way to describe this moment, then this is truly the cruelest twist of fate to befall me right now. Who else to spring up out of nowhere to comfort me than Draco Malfoy? I'm sobbing into his chest because I'm furious at the entire world, and how sickeningly cruel it would have been to let Anthony die; having a rather literal mental breakdown as I grieve the loss of the one man that I have ever truly loved, and seeking vengeance to assure that someone as amazing as him will not go down in vain. Who else in the entire population of the world would come to find and comfort me than the man that I have been slowly falling in love with for months while Anthony was wiped from my memory.

I wanted to hold Draco as close to me as possible and never let him leave me, but another part of me wanted to hurl him and every person in this hospital straight off the roof for lying to me for so long and stripping me of the one stable and cherished thing in my life. I don't know how far involved Draco was in this whole conspiracy, but he alone is such a conflict in my heart right now that he might as well be up with Dr. Lavania and Hermione. I must say though, nothing was more satisfying than bringing the doctor's worthless little life to an end; to make him feel just an ounce of the pain he and everyone else put me through.

But here's the tenth bump in the moral road, because Draco was a coping mechanism for me. He was able to help heal me from the damage they inflicted on me, but it's because of that damage that I even had half the mind to start falling for him. Because lord knows a tumble off the top of this roof would have a softer landing than whatever hellfire I came into with Draco. With all of these clashing thoughts cascading down my train of thought, my mouth opened with a silent scream, no noise actually being able to get past my lips. The arms that still constricted around me tightened their hold, the new pressure scarily reassuring to me.

"Adeline, you don't need to be doing this. Please, this isn't you..." Draco pleaded with me, the inconsistant tones of his voice leading me to believe that this was as hard for him as it was me.

"Don't you dare say anything about what is or isn't me, Draco! You know nothing about me, no matter how much you think you learned in your briefings before you got assigned to me like some babysitter." Making up my mind on where I stood on the placement of Draco's morales, I pried his hands off of me and moved away from him, backing up out of his immediate reaching distance.

"I...I'm not your babysitter Adeline! I took the offer up on the assignment because you...mystified me so much. No one has ever behaved like you before, and everyone wanted to know why you did the things you did. They wanted to know why Adeline Bristol the mass murderer was insane, but I saw you differently; I wanted to know who Adeline Bristol the incredibly talented witch was, because regardless of what horror-story rubbish they publish about you, you are still a human, and I was one of the only people to see that about you." The tears that I had previously suspected were now running freely down his face as he held eye contact with me.

" But that doesn't mean anything! Everyone wants to know why I'm so messed up. Theres nothing separates you from them. I thought there was at first, but there just isn't. I tried so, so hard to pick things out about you, and I thought it was perfect between us, but you were filling a gap I didn't know was empty and now I honestly don't know what to think because Anthony is never going to come back to me, and I so desperately want to let you take his place, but I can't do that to him, or myself, and I really can't do that to you, Draco."

We both seemed to be at a loss for words as the truth in my claim seeped into him, and the thickly-laced emotion of his reveal swam into the torrent of things inside of me at the moment. I cared about Draco so unbelievably much. I had spent hours on end with him, and we had grown so attached to each other that I was beginning to feel physical pain from the distance I had forced between us. We had been apart for so long, and it didn't take much creativity for me to picture the fates laughing hysterically at their handiwork as they reunite me with my missing piece on the same day that all of my memories had been returned.

"Except I'm not like them. In the beginning, maybe, but I'm different than before and we both know it. And before you try to say that I don't know you, please listen to me when I tell you how inaccurate that is, because believe it or not, I listen to what you say and cherish it. I know that you hate the color orange, but you love the hues of the sunset; you grew up in Vermont, and you were basically a musical prodigy; I know that you were born 2 days before and 11 years after I was; I think that beneath every wrong that you've done, you are genuinely caring and are a very gentle person; I think that you are amazing, and sweet, and kind, and beautiful, and every good adjective in the world."

A deep sigh, a light smile, and the shattering of a few nearby windows punctuated the ending of his sentence. Bringing his watering eyes up to meet my own began his next and final statement:

"I also think— or rather I know that I love y—"

The fates chose this exact moment to send a whole swarm of people through the door 40 feet below us.