HP -- Cornered
Title: Cornered
Fandom: Harry Potter
Character: Draco Malfoy
Rating: PG
Word Count: 382
Warnings: none
Summary: Draco knows he is.
Author's Note: Outlined in my head at some ungodly hour and jotted down in fifteen or twenty minutes waiting for class to start. You know. The usual.
CORNERED
He is curled up in the corner, pressed on either side by the wall and the dresser, and he is shaking.
He stares at his trembling hands, so pale as to be almost luminescent in the dim light, and turns them over and over, memorizing his thin fingers and his jagged nails and the myriad little cuts and bruises he has incurred. Most of all, though, he looks at his palms. There is blood on his hands, and as he gazes at his scrubbed skin, he can see it-see it pooling in the hollow made when he cups his hands or curls his fingers; see it coagulating under his scuffed, almost serrated fingernails, burrowing into his cuticles; see it sinking and settling into every crease. It paints dark russet lines that lie ineffable and ineffaceable, like whispered curses, and he looks at them. It makes those delicate hands look old. Filthy. It looks like dirt. Like slime. Like mud.
And it has claimed its place like a tattoo.
He can’t bring himself to draw back the heavy black fabric that hides it. He doesn’t want to see it-can’t bear to. It encapsulates all the terror and the shame, and the dizzying pain of having it seared onto his skin does not even begin to compare with the pain now. The pain of it burning. The pain of knowing what that means.
Ignorance really is bliss, isn’t it?
He thinks he would rather die without knowing why. To subside quietly into peace sounds like a blessing.
And an impossibility.
He isn’t stupid. He knows how it will end. He knows that there will be much more blood on his hands before it’s over. He knows that it will blot out his skin, and his self, and perhaps the sun. And the world will be cold.
Colder, anyway.
He tilts his head back, the unevenness of the paint on the wall quite detectable against his skull. He finds it odd that the paint is imperfect, but he supposes that it is fitting.
He heard, once or twice or a thousand times, that tigers are at their most dangerous when cornered. That desperation gives them preternatural power.
It is a slightly comforting thought.
Or it would be. But he knows he’s no tiger.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Character: Draco Malfoy
Rating: PG
Word Count: 382
Warnings: none
Summary: Draco knows he is.
Author's Note: Outlined in my head at some ungodly hour and jotted down in fifteen or twenty minutes waiting for class to start. You know. The usual.
CORNERED
He is curled up in the corner, pressed on either side by the wall and the dresser, and he is shaking.
He stares at his trembling hands, so pale as to be almost luminescent in the dim light, and turns them over and over, memorizing his thin fingers and his jagged nails and the myriad little cuts and bruises he has incurred. Most of all, though, he looks at his palms. There is blood on his hands, and as he gazes at his scrubbed skin, he can see it-see it pooling in the hollow made when he cups his hands or curls his fingers; see it coagulating under his scuffed, almost serrated fingernails, burrowing into his cuticles; see it sinking and settling into every crease. It paints dark russet lines that lie ineffable and ineffaceable, like whispered curses, and he looks at them. It makes those delicate hands look old. Filthy. It looks like dirt. Like slime. Like mud.
And it has claimed its place like a tattoo.
He can’t bring himself to draw back the heavy black fabric that hides it. He doesn’t want to see it-can’t bear to. It encapsulates all the terror and the shame, and the dizzying pain of having it seared onto his skin does not even begin to compare with the pain now. The pain of it burning. The pain of knowing what that means.
Ignorance really is bliss, isn’t it?
He thinks he would rather die without knowing why. To subside quietly into peace sounds like a blessing.
And an impossibility.
He isn’t stupid. He knows how it will end. He knows that there will be much more blood on his hands before it’s over. He knows that it will blot out his skin, and his self, and perhaps the sun. And the world will be cold.
Colder, anyway.
He tilts his head back, the unevenness of the paint on the wall quite detectable against his skull. He finds it odd that the paint is imperfect, but he supposes that it is fitting.
He heard, once or twice or a thousand times, that tigers are at their most dangerous when cornered. That desperation gives them preternatural power.
It is a slightly comforting thought.
Or it would be. But he knows he’s no tiger.