lady_moon | OOM: Draco at the castle

OOM: Draco at the castle

They step from Milliways onto the sand outside the castle. It's very white. Snow-white. And just as fine and powdery. The ocean laps at the stone walls of the very large building in front of them, and it's unusual because the water isn't blue.

And the sky isn't, either.

Since dawn has just recently broken, the sky is tinged a cool pinkish lavender as the red-orange sun rises. It shines on an ocean the colour of jade, with white foam kissing the waves. Moon smiles at Draco.

"We're the only ones who live on this plane," she explains. "Nothing changes here unless we want it to." Moon points to the battlements of the castle. "I still don't understand why they insisted on battlements. Battlements are for battle and there's no one to battle here."

This is the home of the tarot cards.

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Draco glanced over at her sharply, and mentally checked himself. The Occulumency training. That should be back to where it was before.

He then turned to study the sea some more, the wind gently lifting his pale blond strands back. "I suppose I have, and I don't know. Maybe because anything happy seems like an illusion."

"Maybe you make them illusions."

The card leans back on the railing, swinging her legs.

"Moon says you don't feel anything. But you and I know that isn't true. You feel. You just feel all the wrong things. Everything negative. Anger and hatred and vengeance and arrogance and sadness and cold." Sorrow shakes her head. "It's not healthy."

Draco sighed, "I don't know any other way. I thought I felt otherwise, I want to say it's otherwise. Especially now... I can't comfort anyway, I try to be sympathetic, but it never comes out right."

He added, as he leaned against the railing, watching the green waves, "I find it fun to point out someone's faults, and it's so easy how obvious they make them sometimes. Like they're asking to be mocked."

"They aren't, though."

Sorrow folds her hands in her lap.

"What about when someone mocks your faults?"

"That's different."

"Why?"

She turns on the railing so she can face him properly.

"Why is it different when it's you?"

"Because I don't like it." Mostly because it pointed out how imperfect he was as well. And that he was wrong. Chips into his superiority complex.

Sorrow frowns at him slightly. "Neither do they."

She's unsure of Draco. Sorrow isn't certain if he even wants to change how he is, even if her sister seemed very certain.

"Moon says she brought you here so you could maybe become something else. Something not so bitchy and biting and cruel."

He does, but the old saying about old habits.

Draco frowned, "I do. If I even can. I don't know. I was right in telling Moon that I'm not even sure who I am anymore. If I ever knew that was."

"Maybe you never had the chance to know. Parents can do that... change their children. I was born part card, part human, but Papa... he knew. I was Sorrow very soon after my seventeenth birthday."

Sorrow reaches out and takes one of Draco's hands between hers.

"But we can become more that what our parents designed. More than sorrow... more than cruelty."

He sadly agreed, accepting the contact, "If I did, I don't remember. I always looked up to Father. I love and hate him for it. That and for leaving me. Letting himself be killed for my sake." Lucius was his guide, always using his name as a threat, seeking his attention any way he could. Proving his worth as his son. Putting his own skills of observation, of understanding psychology, and mimicry to work. Making himself into a perfect cypher.

"The question that begs to be answered, though, is where is Draco if Draco only pretends to be Lucius?"

Her thumb rubs the inside of his wrist gently.

It's contact.

Contact makes things more personal.

He stiffened at that, but the contact helped actually. Relaxing him again. At least he can feel that much.

"I don't know. I told you, I can't remember. I've always been like this."

"You can't have always been this way. There was a time, before Lucius began moulding you, that you were Draco. The only son of Narcissa and Lucius. A boy. Before magic. Before intrigue. Before it all."

Parents only begin on moulding their children when the children can be shaped properly.

Sorrow is certain, somewhere in a childhood long forgotten, is a stunted and forgotten child who cries for someone to come save him.

Draco blinked, "But there's always been magic. I was born and raised with it. I was the heir, it's always been so." He then held up the Malfoy Family crest ring on his hand. "It's why I have this now. They loved and raised me."

"That isn't what's important. Yes, it is important, because love given as children is the love we give as adults."

Which might be the problem.

Sorrow looks at the ring.

"When you have a son, do you want him to be a viper as you are?"

"I wish to raise him with what's important."

He sighed again as his hands fell to his sides.

"...No."

"Again I say, the love a child is given is always the love they learn to give in return."

She cups his face.

"If you don't want your children to suffer the fate you do, then the love you give them must be warm, not cold. You might think Mia -- or whatever girl you marry -- can give the love you can't, but it isn't so. The love of one parent doesn't make up for the lack of it from the other."

Sorrow lingers there, looking into his eyes as her palms cradle his face, searching for an opening.

A gap in the armour of Draco's mind and heart.

That brought up some things. Lucius love was fleeting, cold. Distant frequently, parcelling out approval carefully, and swift with rebukes when he thought Draco was lacking.

While Cissa was warmer. Cooler than most parents, but much warmer. Sometimes almost smothering, placating him, spoiling him with treats and gifts.

It had to have been confusing to the child, growing up with such extremes.

"Parents should work together to give their children stability, love, honour, compassion... things you seem to lack terribly."

Her words are spoken kindly and her eyes aren't reproachful.

Sorrow simply speaks the truth.

"But they did love me," He defensively replied, feeling a bit pinned under her gaze nonetheless.

And yet, why was it so hard for him to do so for real? Honour, there was pride, not the same. Compassion, if anything, that was discouraged.

"I'm not saying they didn't. In their way. Their confusing, conflicting way. While they did love you, they taught you all the wrong things. Arrogance and cruelty and ice and sharp teeth and hooked claws and..." Sorrow shakes her head. "What we need to do, though, is find the chink in your armour. Find how to get in and begin to undo some of the iceburg."

Draco sighed, and decided to try something. He closed his eyes. Trying to think back to his past. Days growing up at the Manor. The private tutors, the lessons from his parents. Being groomed from an very early age to be the Malfoy heir, and eventually take his father's place. Subtle training for a future Death Eater, and yet his father kept so much of it away from him. Not telling him anything. His mother not letting him go to a distant school like Durmstrang, wanting to keep him closer to home. Years later, finding out from Snape about the Unbreakable Vow he made with his mother. Not truly understanding what it meant, or not caring. His own father's sacrifice for him.

"I don't see it."

Sorrow smiles that sad, knowing smile of hers.

"I know," she says sympathetically. "That's why you're here, right? You wanted help. Are you willing to actually accept the help we offer?"

Draco thought about it.

And then nodded, "Yes, I wouldn't be otherwise, would I?" Slightly confused by the last question.

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