She’d killed him. She’d killed him, and he was dead. They’d gotten rid of his body, which meant he couldn’t hurt her or her family anymore. That was all she could process before she heard her name. Looked up to see Raphael staring at her. His mask had dropped, and she couldn’t comprehend how many emotions were flitting across his face. He’d just witnessed that with her, lived through it, had to have felt Walter’s hands around his own neck like she did. Wind whistled down her throat as she struggled for more air. Her eyes stung, burning hot and her vision blurred. A sob stumbled out of her, and the fatigue finally caught up with her.

She shook her head silently before allowing herself to sink down to the floor. Her hands came up to cover her face. Another sob.

“I’ll be alright.” She said, feeling very much the opposite. Nothing would ever be alright again. The grave her father had dug for her family had just gotten deeper. She’d convinced herself that this was going to be the end of it. Hoped that it would be the end of it, but it wasn’t. There was more to do, more for her to try and uncover.

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Raphael had grown up with three sisters, and yet he still didn't have any clue how to comfort a crying woman. It wasn't in his nature to know how to explain their fears away and make them feel safe. He usually deflected discomfort and pain with humor and morbidity, and while on a good day he thought Yaxley might find his jokes funny, he doubted she wanted to hear them now. He moved forward and sunk to his knees in front of her, one hand reaching out to wrap around her wrist. He pulled her hand away from her face, his his own expression mirroring her pained one.

"Hey," he said softly. He didn't know what else to say, so he stared her in the eye, hoping she could see that he cared. He knew she knew that—he wouldn't have put himself through all of this if he didn't, but he needed confirmation.

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set by lady <3

She could feel him moving towards her. Somewhere in the back of her mind she wondered what he would do, if he would try and talk to her in cajoling tones. Even in this state she couldn’t imagine Raphael Malfoy being comforting. At most, perhaps he would crack a joke, ask her why she had to go this one alone instead of wait for him to show up for her to drag him through it like all the other times: the Santa Antoina, The Sanditon Season Close. At least she had grabbed him afterwards to hide the body.

But instead, she felt his hand on her wrist. Let him pull it away, and allowed herself to peek out from behind her free hand. He wasn’t cracking jokes at all. In fact, his expression told her he knew what she was going through. If not all of it, then how much she was reeling from reliving her attempted murder. Her mind buzzed with what would have happened had she not been able to get to her wand. A broken “Hello.” was all she could manage before leaning forwards, finally giving into her earlier impulse and falling into him. As sobs heaved at her lungs, she tried to calm herself down; knew this was likely making him uncomfortable. She couldn’t stop feeling the ghost of Walter’s fingers on her skin. She needed something else to try and get rid of that memory, and she wanted to admit whose touch she craved instead. But this was hardly the time or place.

She’d just made him witness something horrific. She couldn’t bring him further into it. “Raphael, I don’t know how much longer I can do this, I can’t — I don’t want — but I need to. You heard him, Papa already owes him so much.” She managed to get out through her sobs. “So…so I need to do this.” She looked up at him, swiping at her tears. “But…but you don’t need to. You don’t — you don’t need to get more involved in this.” Because it wasn’t going to end well. “You've already done more than enough.”

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It wasn't like Yaxley to be so open to comfort; usually she was insistent on putting on some display of resilience, to force him to acknowledge that she was independent and didn't need him. That dynamic began to shift the moment she'd appeared in the gardens of his home, battered and delirious, but he knew that this was different. She was completely conscious and choosing to lean into him, to let him hold her, and he knew it was significant even if he couldn't pinpoint why. He fell backwards into a sitting position and pulled her tighter against him, his arms snaking under her arms to encircle her waist. He pressed his temple to hers, his nose brushing the top of her ear as she sobbed half-incoherent apologies.

"Enough," he said quietly, his hands moving in circles on the small of her back. This was too intimate by any society's standards; he doubted even the poorest of the poor could get away with such closeness between a man and a woman without scandalizing themselves. Yet he couldn't bring himself to care in the moment. "I'm a grown man. You don't need to worry about me."

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set by lady <3

At first, she thought they were falling somewhere. With a small hiccup of terror, she reached out and seized his lapels, ready to bury her face into his chest as if they were about to fall out of the sky. Instead, she realized he’d just fallen backwards in order to pull her closer. Her head spun, trying to comprehend exactly how close they’d become, both in the past year, and in the past few seconds. She’d let him into her mind, let him see all aspects of her life, some of which even Zelda didn’t know about. He leaned into her, leaned into the very spot at her temple that had been aching moments ago. She could feel a whisper of a touch skim the shell of her ear; another sensation that sent a shiver down her back.

Hearing his voice was a balm compared to the thundering of Walter’s cursing that was sure to invade her dreams later that night. She was about to be seized by the realization that she had to go home alone, that she was terrified of doing so, when his reassurances finally registered with her. “Yes I do!” she protested through another sob that was quite ruinous to the tone she was attempting to use on him. “This is my family, Raphael not yours.” She’d never spoken to his sisters before as they’d hardly run in the same social circles, but she didn’t want to know what kind of ire from the Malfoy family that she’d face if this got out of hand and the truth came to light. “You… you’re the heir, you can’t be attached to this anymore.”

The day had come for hell to freeze over: she was worried about the Malfoy family, people whom she never would have thought deserved an ounce of her fretting; moreso the eldest one — the one currently with his arms around her causing her spine to tingle in strange ways. “You have your family to think about.” Rowan drew another steady breath, feeling the fog in her head clear a little bit more. Yes, this was the only way. She’d already endangered her family by revealing herself. Who knew what kind of trail Walter had left? There had to be more dangerous people involved. The more she thought about it, the more it made sense. The more she worked to shove her thoughts away, to clear her mind. To realize that he couldn't be involved anymore. “You need to think about them.”

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Raphael understood her, but wholly disagreed. What sort of gentleman would he be if he abandoned a woman—regardless of her station and magical ability—to deal with this severe of trouble herself? His younger self might have balked at his current train of thought, and maybe even his current self if it was anyone else. But this was Yaxley.

"I'm already involved too much to step back," he reminded her, "I've been seen with you. I've been cursed. You can try to send me away, but the people that are out for your family have reason to continue targeting me." He pulled back far enough to look her in the eye. He pulled one arm from around her waist and lifted a hand up to smooth away the stray hairs that were sticking to her tear-stained face.

"To keep my family safe I need to know what's happening. You can't be a martyr," he chided, brushing his thumb under her eye, unable to admit how pleased he was to have an excuse to have his hands on her.

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set by lady <3

A wave of guilt washed over her. She’d already pulled him in too deep. Her expression crumpled again.The rest of the fog in her head cleared away and the memories of Walter’s death clicked into the timeline of what had happened so far. If Malfoy hadn’t bought that earring for her, he wouldn’t have gotten cursed. Her gaze moved from looking up at him, down to the base of his throat where she knew the fractals of the curse were still embedded in his skin. She wanted to protest, to tell him he was wrong and that these were two separate issues. But for all they knew, the pawn shop employees were a part of it. Why else would they have gone to the trouble of sending an extremely complicated curse to his house? Logic told her that Splitters and his lackeys were not intelligent enough to think of, much less craft a cursed object like that.

Even with all that knowledge, Rowan didn’t want him anywhere near this. She didn’t want him hurt again. As she worried about him, she became painfully aware of exactly how close they were. How his fingers brushed across her skin, so gentle and soft. She’d already indulged herself enough tonight. She should probably stop him at some point, but her heart was hammering too loud in her chest for her to think anything except how she wanted to curl a hand around his neck and pull his lips onto hers.

“I don’t want you to get hurt anymore.” She murmured instead, wrenching her gaze away from his and looking back down to her hands. If he’d gotten hurt again, how could she live with herself?

How could he live with himself if you got hurt again?

The painfully hopeful thought was gone before she could could comprehend what had led her to think of Raphael Malfoy in that way. The boy who she swore was just a spoiled heir back at Hogwarts, who wanted nothing more to do with her other than to use her to get better grades. Her eyes caught sight of the red line around her pinky finger, and she brushed her thumb against it. When Rowan had returned home, she was terrified her family would ask about a mark that was in such an obvious place on her body, but no one had asked such a thing. Even Maisie, who was always so attentive to what Rowan looked like, hadn’t commented on it. It’d taken her a day or so to realize that these marks must only be visible to her and Malfoy, because there was no possibility that she was imagining it. No one at work had commented on it either.

It was a reminder of how linked they already were. Permanent. Yet another thing Rowan had given into, and had no control over anymore. A reminder of how she had no choice but to keep going down this path, and had dragged Malfoy with her. And it was a reminder of exactly how terrified she’d become for his safety. How much she cared about him. It crashed down on her, all consuming, pulling her down again. She couldn’t breathe. She needed to clear her head. She couldn’t think straight.

She had to get out of here. “I need — I need to go.” She began wriggling out of his arms, her cheeks now bright red at how close they were. How alone they were. “I can’t — I can’t do this, I need to think clearly.”

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I don’t want you to get hurt anymore.

For the first time Raphael was forced to reckon with the concept that she perhaps cared for him, and he had no idea what to do with that information. He was no stranger to having women fancy him, though usually it was for superficial reasons—money, his appearance, his family name. He flirted and he wooed, usually just for the fun of it. He wasn't used to emotions coming into play, and he reminded himself that he could not get involved with a woman like Rowan Yaxley.

Or he tried to.

The skin under his shirt tingled with every brush of her hand against the fabric. They were the same tingles he felt when he ran his fingertips across her skin and down the side of her face before lowering his hand. He didn't feel this much of a physical reaction when he laid with whores or gripped the waists of dainty debutantes tighter than he ought to simply to amuse himself with their flushed cheeks. It was ridiculous to feel this way, hauled up in a dirty shack in the late hours of the night after performing legilimency on a woman with tears in her eyes, but in a way it felt perfectly normal. He'd always felt this way around her, he realized—even when he wasn't touching her.

It was fortunate, Raphael thought, that Yaxley pulled away when she did. He allowed her to wriggle out of his grasp, pushing himself to his feet just as she did. If they'd sat together any longer he didn't think he'd have stopped himself from doing something he'd regret the next morning. She was scared, sad, and vulnerable—he ought to be ashamed for thinking of her like this at all.

"Rowan—" he started, reaching out to catch her wrist. He internally cringed at the use of her first name but kept his expression even. "No rash decisions. Please. Write to me. Visit me if you must."

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set by lady <3

Somewhere in the back of her mind she’d wanted him to stop her. She’d wanted him to reach out and keep her there, to tell her everything was going to be alright. But of course, they already knew it wasn’t. That hope had been smothered the minute Rowan had decided to pursue the lead Maisie gave her. The moment she stepped foot in the warehouse. And the point of no return was the minute she’d apparated almost directly into Malfoy’s bloody bedroom. What had she been thinking?

Her head still hurt from enduring Malfoy’s legilimency, and she nearly was forced to sit back down as the room seemed to tilt on its axis in front of her eyes. She placed a hand on the wall to steady herself, blinking rapidly to clear her mind. Was it possible for her brain to feel so physically sore? So sluggish to the point that it was hard to concentrate on what he was saying.

His grasp on her bare wrist was enough to make her look up and stare at him. Of course, his expression was unreadable, except for the flush that dappled itself over his cheeks. And that flush was likely from exertion more than anything. No rash decisions. She’d have protested if it weren’t true. She’d made nothing but rash decisions up until this point. What was she thinking? She was no Gryffindor, she had never attempted to act like a heroine in a novel. But, she mused, perhaps everyone would go to the lengths to protect someone they loved.

A connection between this thought and something she’d said to him earlier began to lace itself together in her mind. She stopped it short, clearing her throat, forcing her thoughts to clear before the connection was fully made. Nodded once to Malfoy and dusted off her skirt. So far she had no plans to do anything except go home and collapse on her bed from exhaustion. But she pressed her lips together before nodding once more: “Alright.”

Write to him. Visit him. She’d already done both of those things before, and nothing good had come of it. Rowan hardly doubted that would change.

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