Prompt: "He set fire to the world around him but never let a flame touch her."
Category: Angst
Rating: T
Warnings: Implied coercion.
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She looked lovely, standing at the balcony, staring out at the city scattered beneath her feet.
Her brown hair caught in the wind and revealed her pale, bare shoulders, as pale as the hands gripping the railing, and the bare feet peeking out from beneath the sheer white shift she wore.He could see the narrow nip of her waist, the gentle flare of her hips, and her thin tapering legs.
The wind blew more constantly, and her hair whipped forward, covering her face.
She didn't move.
She might be cold.
He slipped his cloak off his shoulders and approached her, dropping it over her shoulders and gently brushing back the curls obscuring her eyes.
She still didn't move.
"What's on your mind?"
She was silent for several seconds. "Many things."
His fingers curled into a slow fist when she failed to say anything else. "Such as?"
There was a longer silence, and he watched her knuckles turn white. Her body began to shake minutely.
"I was calculating how many seconds it would take me to hit the ground if I jumped off the balcony. How many people are dead because of me. How many will die if I stay alive. And how many you'll kill if I died now," she finally said in a forced, automatic voice.
A curdling sensation swept through his gut. His lip curled into a snarl as he gripped her shoulder and forced her to turn and face him.
"I'll kill them all if you die."
Her lovely brown eyes were flat as she looked up at his face and nodded slowly. "That was my conclusion."
"Good," he said in clipped voice.
He let go of her and stalked back inside.
Once he was alone, he wrenched open a drawer in his closet and pulled out an old photo of her. Her eyes were bright and dancing, and he watched as she wrapped her arms around Potter and Weasley, threw back her head, and laughed.
He could almost hear it, although she hadn't laughed for years now.
She feigned it—polite chuckles in response to his jokes or the jokes of his friends. Her eyes always stayed flat. The light in them didn't dance; the corners didn't crinkle. She never gripped her chest or gasped as though she couldn't breathe from it.
She was never happy.
Nothing he gave her was ever enough.
He'd set fire to the world around him, but never let a flame touch her.
He hadn't calculated that her unbearable sense of empathy meant she'd feel it all anyway.
