Nobody Ever Asked
When Draco was 17, he was pulled into a war he never wanted to fight. A war that changed who he was and the very creed of the world he lived in.
But he survived.
He fought and he chose sides when he had to and in the end he was still standing when so many others had fallen on the last day of war, when life started anew. Seven months later the first child after the war was born. A year later people celebrated their dead, and finally life went on, and future got a meaning again. Two years later there was laughter once more and soldiers who had been children when they had stood in battle had learned to live as adults, finally, after being forced to act like it much too early.
Draco wasn't the first baby's father and he never talked about his own dead father again after he watched him die at his feet. He didn't think about his future and somehow he stayed a soldier, still, when everyone else went soft.
His edges remained and somehow he didn't fit in anymore, a soldier with only himself left to war against.
He left England in the fourth year after the war, when Harry married and Hermione had her first child. When Ron learned how to burp a baby and Ginny was rotting in the ground.
Buffy came back, eventually, and they never talked about betrayal again, and somehow they won. They won a war that was impossible to survive and suddenly she was faced by the greatest enemy she had ever fought against.
Her own future.
Somehow it didn't feel right, to live after dying, after wanting to die and after watching so many others fall in a battle that had been forced upon them by her destiny, that was to be theirs. Somehow she still stood when the dust settled and they asked her what she was going to do now. She smiled at their question, and let them believe that it was a happy smile while she was laughing at the insanity of it all.
Because she was never meant to stand here. Because what she was going to do was die in this war. And once again the choice was taken from her, like it had been in the cave and in the mansion, at the tower and every single day before and after that, because of who she was, had been, would never be again, because there was meant to be only one and now there was an army.
They went to see Angel, and one by one they flew out into the world, to live, to learn, to love. To call once a month asking are you alright, yes of course I'm fine, no I don't know yet, and you can live now Buffy.
They failed to ask her if she wanted to.
And finally, finally, after so much normal life that she couldn't take it anymore she told them that she was going away and they said yes, of course, that's good for you, thinking that she would come back.
She didn't.
She took a false name and lived and lived and hated it but came to terms with it because there is nothing you can do about life, is there?
They met somewhere between here and there, in a bar both looking like they didn't belong, and didn't want to. He was sitting silently in a corner and she felt like silence so she borrowed a little of his and eventually he asked her name.
She gave him a false name and he gave her a false reason for his presence and nobody questioned his being in her bed the next morning, because everyone was busy living, moving on, rotting, and not remembering those who didn't belong anymore.
Somehow she landed in the same bar again a month later, but, no, of course she wasn't looking for the silent guy without a reason and he landed in her bed again and, no, it was purely incident that he had planned to go the same way as she had, anyway, when they took of in his car two days later.
They drove in silence, because neither wanted to start talking, because they had learned not to talk about soldiers and war and the life they didn't fit in, or want. So they remained silent, for almost a month, going everywhere and seeing the world but not seeing a thing, except dirty sheets and bottomless eyes and the never changing sky above, that always watched.
Constantly, silently, it had watched their wars and it would remember them like it would remember the two not-really-blondes- anymore, forever and ever and somehow that made them feel better.
Because something remembered.
The sky, dark and endless was also the only witness of two all too mortal people, with too much life to handle and too little morbidity to take care of the problem, sleeping under the stars in the desert.
Mexico, because he had wanted to see the south and she had asked him not to go to California. And somehow they both lay there side by side and she told him her real name and after a long silence and too many cigarettes for both of them, he sighed deeply and told her his story.
Told her everything, including rotting Ginny and dead Lucius. Told her about burps that left him wanting to puke and happiness that made him feel dead.
A soldier with only himself left to war against.
She didn't run and she didn't judge him, but she opened her mouth and somehow the words came tumbling out, all at once and she was glad that they did, because somehow she felt safe in the middle of the desert under an old blanket with a no-longer-child soldier beside her.
She told him how she was supposed to live, now, and how they had failed to ask her if she wanted to.
In the end they ran out of cigarettes and he showed her his wand and she lifted him with one hand only, but not too high because he was so much taller than her and for the first time she didn't care.
They left Mexico a few days later and when she wanted to see Europe they bought two tickets with money from his dead family and flew to Paris where he showed her all the places to be and the art. And when they went to England he didn't want to go to Scotland because it was where Hogwarts lay and with it too many memories of rotting corpses and the laughter of children. Children who didn't know, care, whatever because Harry Potter was just a too thin boy with a scar and history was for old people and those who didn't have a life of their own.
History was what was flowing in their veins like blood, because they wrote it and there was too much legacy on their shoulders to ever get rid of.
He showed her the other places, sight seeing after the war because her guide was pointing and saying: This is where we lost Neville. And: That's where the twins pulled their last trick.
They followed his ghosts across the country and in the end they went to London and somehow they landed in front of a giant old wooden door, his hand on a doorbell he never rang and then they left, deciding to go to New York.
They didn't question the fact that they didn't even think of going separate ways. They didn't shake heads when they noticed that neither would sleep before the other was there to hold them and they didn't talk about the little smiles they sent each other and the constant body-contact. After a while they decided that it was time for her to face her ghosts as well and she took the phone and dialed a number she would never forget and waited for almost a minute until someone answered the phone.
But then, within seconds they were all in the room, switching her voice to loud and she had to hold in her laughter as Draco was making silly faces. Finally, after she had listened to them begging her to come home for almost 20 minutes she let go of the laughter and told them everything.
She told them how they had forgotten to ask her if she even wanted to, and how she had spent the night under the sky and a smelly old blanket and how she wasn't planning on coming back because they had wanted her to get her own life. Away from theirs, right? After 32 minutes she rolled her eyes at her first-love's too many questions and too loud pleas, because she finally accepted the fact that they didn't understand her and she realized that they never had, because if they had they would have asked, right?
She slammed down the phone and they made love then and there and then they fell silent because they had never called it making love before and if they thought about it they had never called it love at all. It was something, there was no doubt about that, it wasn't necessarily love, but it wasn't anything else either, really.
Six years after his war and four and a half after hers, Harry Potter appeared in their living room with a tiny pop and told them that Draco's mother was dead. He shrugged and they went to bed, like nothing had happened but the next morning they port-keyed to the funeral after all. She didn't know any of the people there, but she still knew all their secrets because he had whispered them to her, when his own hadn't been enough, in the dead of the night, between the nightmares they both sometimes had. A lot of people came and hugged him and said welcome home, eying her wearily, but they didn't say anything, because it was his mother's funeral after all and for the first time she realized that nobody had asked him either, if he wanted all this. His father's legacy and his mother's eyes and another generation's war to fight.
After smiling at once beautiful, strong women, fighters in their own right and their too fat children and listening to talk about swollen ankles and breast feeding for almost three hours her cheeks were sore and she wondered if life always turned proud women into bent, fat Yes Madams, with a stunning interest in pot plants and diapers. When she couldn't take it anymore she went and pulled Draco away from where he was talking with the other men, about their son's soccer matches on the second weekends of each month and problems at the ministry, that had to do with someone charming a car to constantly change its color, and she dragged him into his mother's bedroom.
It was almost an hour later when and Harry and Hermione were the ones to find them and they were disappointed in their friend because, they said it was inappropriate and it was time for him to move on after all.
This life can't be good for you, you need a real job and a woman who is good for you, you need something constant in your life and he rolled his eyes because they never ever ever ever understood what he was about.
The war is over, Draco, you have to move on, you're still young, you can lead a good life, a real life, just come back, we'll help you. He pulled on his pants and grabbed his clothes in one hand while taking Buffy's with in his other one and pushed past them, out of the room and all the while he was laughing, because they knew so little and he felt so old and he was still a soldier, after all. They crashed the civilized party downstairs, his mother's last one in this world, half naked, and laughing hysterically. Then they were out the front door in the rain and he stopped, feeling the wet grass between his toes and her warm hand in his and he called over the rain, loud and clear.
What if I don't want this life? What if I don't want a life at all, what if this fucking war was the last thing I was supposed to ever do? What if I'm still alive and living on borrowed time I never asked for? What if I'm still the fucking soldier you made out of a child who never wanted to fight?
And then he got them home and they were laughing hard at the memory of stunned faces and crying babies and then they looked each other in the eye and fell very silent.
Silent, because they realized that it really was love and that they were still soldiers without a war.
Because no one had ever bothered to ask them if they wanted to live and they had never bothered to think about the answer.
And then they kissed because they realized that it didn't matter anymore.
Because the answer has been Yes all along.