A Romeo\'s Nemesis

Chapter 5

An Improvised Rehearsal

Lucius made to wipe his face put couldn\'t quite make it over to the towel-railing with Narcissa slumped in a heap of fornicated lethargy without brushing her hair - ew. For some time now, Lucius had been encouraging Narcissa to get out and socialize with a more... progressive group of people since she was obviously so supercilious to every other pureblood family they associated with. It was a wonder she wasn\'t another flipping Gryffindor just like her damned cousin the way she held them all in clandestine esteem - filthy mudbloods.

Lucius paused just above Narcissa\'s drooling jaw and, thoroughly repulsed, made his way back to the den where Draco was practicing various curses on Dobby\'s brother, Spikwad; Lucius couldn\'t help but beam at the torture tactics being applied. Cackling incredulously, Draco forced Spikwad to crack open part of his scalp on a near by glass table after she repeatedly danced into it, then threw him across the room with a subsequent yelp in response, elf- blood sullying the oriental rug repugnantly. It was getting late and Lucius was hoping for a bit of a run-through tonight, however more pertinent things concerning survival needed atoning first. Lucius cleared his throat and stared imperiously at his protégé through dust-clouded eyes.

\"Draco, in what mudblood Christian doctrine have you been studying as of late?\" Lucius waited and watched amusedly as Draco\'s lips curled and sneered in unspoken retaliation. Lucius stalked forward, leaning over seated Draco with imminent tempestuous grace.

\"I say, because if you\'ve been looking up various rules to break on your vacation,\" Lucius’ face flickered in hope, \"then you\'ve failed to accurately delineate the mudblood\'s theory of commandments-\" Lucius jaunted with occasional fury toward to mantle when he plunged his hand down into the sorrel flames now dying down, then across to grasp an ancient antique scabbard and brought it up close to the boy\'s throat. Gasping in genuine fright, Draco eased himself closer into the cold comforting leatherback and clutched the arm rests with dire physical expulsion; Lucius smiled crudely.

\"If it says, \"thou shalt not kill\" are you then willing to kill yourself in order to disobey a bloody muggle syntax, Draco!\" Lucius now bellowed, pressing the blade into the soft curve of Draco\'s pulse and watching the tears hit the simpering blade in all of its credulity.
\"Or is it just a difficulty with semantics; a miscommunication or interpretation on an outdated principle? Draco, do you understand me?\" Lucius’ eyes softened but tone remained stern, \"do you understand your impending death by emaciation? Are you in such pain to forget your obligation?\" Lucius’ eyes narrowed once more in rage and benediction.

\"I never had the opportunity nor the gall to resign myself from the path my forefathers had set out for me, especially not by dying - they wouldn\'t let me die - no one would, and perhaps now it was all for the best -\" the blade trembled and Lucius’ hair fell across the left side of his face purposefully, \"perhaps you will succeed where I couldn\'t stop obsessing over when I was a boy... I couldn\'t do anything outside of what I was meant to.\"

Lucius dropped the weapon and sat down in the opposite chair to Draco rather shakily; Draco\'s mouth was hanging. Running his hands through his hair after a few minutes, Lucius pulled his pale brow up to his twin\'s.

\"Draco, don\'t die,\" he sighed and stiffened automatically at the threat of death and lack of self-preservation, \"if not for yourself, or the gods forsaken line, then for me-\"
Bristling even further if it was indeed possible, Lucius squirmed and fitted his bum squared in the concave slope of the chair back.
\"Don\'t be selfish,\" Lucius whispered and jerked at Draco\'s scowl and even more disconcerted by his lack of lip, \"you may not want yourself... but I do.\"

And left at that, Lucius stood up and pulled their set closer to one another; sitting back down, he gawked lucidly up and down his son.
\"Draco, am I a man you wouldn\'t mind becoming one day?\" Draco spluttered at his chance to speak and didn\'t want to make an ass of himself, especially since his father had obviously had to push through a lot of emotional barricades to bring him to... this.

\"You are the man I\'m destined to become,\" Draco answered skilfully, his mind working furiously and slightly objecting to the new onslaught of enigmatic answers to get him off so prior to Hogwarts. Lucius cocked an eyebrow and tried again.

\"Answer the question for yourself, Draco - do you like what I am?\" crossing his legs and entwining his fingers, Lucius traced the miniscule calluses on each knuckle, barely perceptible by any other\'s standards - he didn\'t start bloody shaving until he was twenty-five for jinkie\'s sake.

\"Uhemm.... I like you,\" Draco said sympathetically, fully aware of how somtimes Lucius became bipolar and difficult to anticipate, perhaps this was one of those occasions; maybe in contrast to all of his ascendancy and adroit control over other people\'s minds, he got tired of going incognito as the ruthless bastard when he really wasn\'t all that bad... most of the time. Lucius could almost feel the sympathy in Draco\'s face as he turned to look over through the stained glass over 3000 years old.

\"Draco, I was going to libel your mother and declaim our plan for this evening, but if you continue to resist providing me with any decent responses, then I will not bother.\"
Draco\'s eyes widened at this still shocking chance to expel his true take on the most important thing in his life; the one things that was truly keeping him alive was all he needed to address and he would fear no repercussions.

\"Father, you are a man riddled with indecision, malice, greed, auspition and finance; you have many issues probably genetic, and some ten thousand fold do to your own spontaneity. You are a man who can\'t stand to be wrong or challenged or criticized or shown charity to by any less than your own social standing; you hate so many people, it\'s frightening,\" Draco paused and watched as Lucius’ brows furrowed and his head bobbed and silently averred.
\"You are secretive, manipulative and intimidating; you thrive on power and dominance and inflicting pain in some cases just as -\" Draco hiccupped and blushed, \"just as you have suffered.\"

Lucius’ head flicked up out of its introspective bow and the faintest glimmer of affirmation was to be found past begrudgment.
Draco saw the humility still present, even when confronted (thankfully, amicably) with his worst traits.

\"You are relentless and surreal in your drive to obtain anything you think will expand the family vaults - you\'ve been conditioned,\" Draco took one last breath before finishing.

\"You are sad - you feel it and you look it when you are alone and exposed and raw and needy; you are generous because you\'re able to be, yet discriminating because you should be with our fortune, and you are passionate about the things you love...\" Draco\'s eyes rested in his lap after flicking around the room for ten minutes, not baring to meet his father\'s abashed appraisal.
\"That\'s something I never knew about you until this past week and... no, I wouldn\'t mind being like you at all,\" Draco finished and managed to choke back some embarrassingly thick gasps. Lucius sagged in the armchair, shadowed heavily now by the extinguished fire, or what little of it remained in the hearth.

Similarly to his wife in the bathroom, Lucius was completely knocked out at Draco\'s insight into his psyche - he hadn\'t thought he\'d paid him much mind other than what he could wheedle out of him. He was shaking in his seat and desperately wanted to show his son how his words had moved him and for the first time in ages... probably a good twelve years, reached out across the space between them and held his boy compact against his heart, sanguicolous and thankful. Draco couldn\'t suppress any more of his impending release and sobbed against Lucius’ hair with free abandon, the unconscious Spikwad just coming around only to pretend to still be out cold.

\"Father, I won\'t die,\" Draco breathed into the side of his father\'s head and kissed his temple with childish affection; Lucius swooned and leant into his son\'s face to press a thorough smack on the moist, seemingly detached appariage of Draco\'s mouth.

Looking up into his father\'s open face, Draco knew the stark and desolate truth; no one had ever wanted Lucius to live other than
to provide an heir and an unsullied wizard wife to the list of blonde, callous butchers depicted in the portrait hall. He wanted him to
live now though, and told him so shakily enough to imbue a slight aftershock of an earthquake if there was one, stroking his
cheek and pressing up into the tailored bands draped over his knees.

Lucius pulled back out of force of habit even though he was ecstatic inside; he\'d guaranteed his son\'s life and his own in one clever talk - oh the perfect Slytherin he was, although this ploy had been admittedly unintentional, it worked none the less. The emotional connection left another connection very prominent as he ascended off of his son, a carnal smile etched into his still unguarded face, leaving Draco a little dazed but with some incendiary to want to follow him and more importantly, want to exist.



* Alright, although I have read much L/D fics previously and have enjoyed every single one because of several abominable proclivities I seem to be susceptible to, I have not run into one that hasn\'t de-Malfoy\'d the Malfoys on any level. I would in my fic, like to promote the same arrogant, death-eater type Malfoys to no small extent in their outward character flaws, etc. I don\'t feel this has to abhor the development or possible vindication of any more admirable qualities either; I won\'t try to change L & D too much, just expose a few hidden undertones into their personas that seem apparent to me in my experience with similar individuals in real life.