A/N - Content warning: various forms of self-destructive behavior, including cutting. Despite the M rating, there will be no explicit smut.

This was written as a gift for my blasphemous friend with talent to envy, Ibuzoo.

. . . . . . . . . .

This is a story told in fragments about people who aren't real in a place that doesn't exist. Some of it might even be true. Some of it is just what I wanted to have happen. Some of it is what I was afraid would. Sometimes I can even tell the difference between the two.

Like all stories, it has no beginning, no middle, no end. I picked a place to start and decided that was the first day, but was it then, or was it some day in childhood when I cut my hand on a bit of broken glass? Or was it later, when it started to be about more than fear and sublimation? Did it start or end when he got married? I'll let you decide.

I picked an end. This, I said, is the fitting conclusion to my narrative, but that's as much of a lie as the rest of it. The sun came up the next day. Life went on.

You shouldn't believe a thing I tell you.

. . . . . . . . . .

"You wanted to see me?"

Draco stepped into the room Tom had commandeered for an office and tried not to look around like some indigent kid. Fresh graduate or not, he wasn't some wide-eyed rube who'd never seen wood-paneled walls or thick carpets before. This kind of opulence might impress Ronald. Not him. Besides, it was his house. He'd grown up here. He'd run through these halls as a child. If there was anyplace to feel safe, it was here. With that in mind, he kept his eyes on the man who held his fate in his hands, the man who had, for some reason, singled him out for attention.

"Yes," Tom flicked one glance up from the map he'd spread out on a table and Draco could feel his stomach lurch at the casual amusement lurking in the edges of that upturned mouth. "Draco Malfoy. Eighteen-years-old. Bright. Lucius' son. Did you pay attention at Hogwarts or waste all your time on Quidditch like your friend."

Tom's opinion of wasting time on Quidditch couldn't have been clearer.

"Harry's a talented wizard," Draco said, compelled to defend the boy he'd known for years even if they hardly counted as friends.

"So that's a no, then," Tom said. "Unfortunate. Dismissed." He had his head back down and a finger tapping on the paper at once, seemingly already lost back in his own thoughts, Draco forgotten.

"I did," Draco blurted out, and took a quick, nervous step toward the map. He half-expected to be told to leave, that he'd already been dismissed. Instead the man looked up and made a sharp jerk with his chin, an obvious order to join him at the maps.

Tom began running through the past ten years of history as Draco struggled to process how war looked from the point of view of the king rather than the solider. He heard himself asking questions and he wanted to impress as he never had, and, after he got it once, he wanted to see that quick nod of approval directed at him again. He wanted this man's attention focused on him.

"Someone with a mind," Tom said at last as he straightened up from the table and Draco realized with a shock the entire session had been a test. The disappointment no one really wanted him opinion on strategy must have shown because Tom laughed. "You're an untried child, Draco. But you can think, and your ideas aren't wholly obvious. That makes you valuable to me."

"Thank you," Draco said. He took a step back and tried to decide what to do with his hands. He tried clasping them in front of him and that felt weird. He had no pockets in these robes, and he finally crossed his arms even though he knew that posture looked defensive and petulant at best. "Valuable is what I try to be."

Tom took a step closer until he hovered just far enough away that Draco could stop himself from stepping backward. "I own you," Tom said, "I own all of you, or might as well. Do you object to being valuable for me?"

Draco closed his eyes. "No," he said. It was the expected answer. It was the required answer.

He could feel Tom's breath on his face. He could smell it. He'd been drinking something a lot like whiskey and Draco couldn't tell if he wanted a kiss or dreaded it. He certainly expected it. When he felt the knife at his neck instead he swallowed hard, and that made his throat press into the blade. Every nerve in his body was suddenly alive and tingles ran down his legs and up his spine. He tried not to swallow again. He tried not to breathe too hard. The cut stung. It was all he could think about and his whole world narrowed down to the feel of metal against his skin. He wanted more. He was terrified of more. He wanted to barricade himself in the bathroom back in his room and find some kind of release.

"You do realize you could take a step backward," Tom said. "Don't you?"

It was the amusement in that voice that held him in place. He shivered but didn't step away and listened to Tom breathe. Please, was all he could think. Please.

When he opened his eyes Tom had pulled the small knife away and was wiping blood off the blade. "Intriguing," he said. "Do you like pain, or is it the fear?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Draco said. He was pleased that he kept his voice steady. "Do you usually cut at your assistants? It's going to be a trifle difficult to explain to my friends if I always return from time in your office with blood on me."

Tom reached a finger out and brushed it across the shallow cut and it felt like nothing but Draco knew the wound had been erased. "Impressive," he said. That kind of magic wasn't something they taught at school. He pushed away his disappointment that the mark was gone. Follow that thread to its conclusion and he'd run right into Atropos.

Tom turned away, his eyes and mind on the books scattered on his desk. "You learn things in a war," he said. "You will learn things, Draco."

"So I pass?" Draco could hear the hint of a plea for reassurance in his voice and hated it. Letting this man, of all people, see anything but the most polished surface could be disastrous.

"You'll do," Tom said. "Be here every Tuesday after breakfast."

Draco tried to keep his eyes off the knife Tom still casually passed from one hand to the other and as he nodded his compliance and let himself out. He kept his pace brisk as he walked through the halls of Malfoy Manor. He was fine. He'd just been startled, that was all. That was all.

. . . . . . . . . .

Do you pity me? Envy me? Believe me?

You shouldn't. Not yet, anyway.

It gets worse.