[ The moment that she's out, she's out. For stretches of time, it's a restful sleep, deep and untroubled, utterly blank and devoid of anything that isn't the black backs of her eyelids. Or maybe that is a dream, a reflection of the last eight days spent in darkness with only the bobbing guide of three flashlight beams to cut through it all.
When she does wake up, briefly, Claire doesn't stop to consider the possibility. Her alarm goes off after three hours, and she hovers in between awake and asleep long enough to send a message to whoever it is keeping an eye on the dogs in comms, asking them to please keep them a little while longer, she's so tired, drop them off back at the room and please feed them, etc. She doesn't drift off completely again until the unit chirps in affirmation, and then it's back under, submerged once again.
Waking up for good is a slow process, and she hasn't moved very much in almost eight hours so while her bones don't ache, everything weirdly still feels stiff. For a while, she fights with this new conscious state, rejecting it in favor of the alternative. Eventually she extracts a hand from where it's been curled into a ball between them and scrubs at her face, pushing a substantially larger amount of hair back from her eyes and nose than was there when she laid down to begin with. ]
Good morning. [ Bleary. Eyes closed. She hopes her breath doesn't stink and she just manages to avoid a typical morning stretch while still in such close proximity. ] How long was I asleep?
Morning. [ Quietly murmured. Severus is fully awake by now, but in no hurry to get up and get going. He strokes her hair back from her forehead a little, but is cognizant to not poke around at her face more than that while she's still waking up. ] I'm not sure. Did I dream beeping?
[ Maybe Severus had half-opened his eyes during the alarm interruption, but sensing no need to panic, instantly dropped back off. Otherwise he was useless, unconscious weight. ]
[ Claire has to think about that for a moment. Ultimately she decides that it sounds too familiar to have been a dream and, stretching her toes, retrieves her comm unit from the comforter. ]
Alarm went off. I didn't feel like getting up. [ She yawns, still only approaching the idea of being wholly awake. ] Had to make sure the dogs were okay.
[ The blankets are too warm for her to jeopardize letting any of the cold air in from outside, so Claire gets one of her arms under his and draws her knees up almost to her chest, pressing up against him and not bothering to be hesitant about it. Conversation comes to her in snipped fragments from the hours prior to falling asleep. She hasn't forgotten about the bandage even without having to look at it. ]
[ He exhales a laugh through his nose when she wiggles closer and adjusts as to not get kneed anywhere squishy. He knows it's a conscious effort on both their parts not to become awkward or anxious about this, and he appreciates it - is glad for it in a small, unusual way he's not able to properly put his finger on. ]
Mmhm. [ Settled with his arms around her again, since neither are going anywhere, apparently. ] I haven't been awake for too long.
[ She makes a noise of vague acknowledgment, wondering if she's still half-asleep and nothing else. Her eyes flutter closed again, just briefly, and then she takes a deep breath in and following it back out, waking up the last little bit of the way. Even if she wanted to go back to sleep, there would be no getting back to that level of nothingness now. ]
I'm awake. [ In case anyone other than her needed clarification. ] Not that I'm complaining right now, but did you know that your room is really cold?
I think I'm too adapted to dungeon temperatures. [ Northern Scotland in winter, three floors deep at best. His classroom and laboratory could become warm and humid from the work in them, but his personal quarters always were always cold. ] When you build underground, it always stays low. The heat just never creeps in from outside.
[ Although she isn't sure why anyone would choose a dungeon to keep their quarters and house in, at the moment she really isn't complaining about the temperature. It means that she has an excuse to stay where she is without having to consider the ramifications or implications surrounding it. Her mind has been a constant tangle about this for months; for once it's nice to have some clarity, even if it's based on a flimsy excuse. ]
Maybe later. [ At the moment the only part of her that's actually cold at all is her nose. The cocoon they have managed to somehow carve out does okay in keeping everything else warm, and in the interest of making sure that he doesn't get up to fix it, Claire gathers up some of his shirt in the curl of her fingers. ] Who put a dorm in a dungeon anyway?
The school is a castle. It's bigger inside than outside. [ Severus hasn't felt homesick yet, not really; he felt a kind of exhausted despair being haunted by dreams of Albus, before going into the hallways and seeing those constructs of home. But it's not the same. His voice is muted, almost nostalgic. ] Two houses have dormitories in towers, two are underground. The Slytherin common room backs up underneath the Black Lake, and we have glass windows against the water on one side. The older girls' rooms have windows that can see the grounds, but they're pointed up, so they can see the stars at night and the edge of the forest.
[ The way that he describes it, as limited and without adjectives as it is, still makes it sound kind of awesome. But still. Cold and damp. Claire supposes that's where magic comes in handy. ]
My view at Arlington was of a tree and a bunch of other dormitories. Water on one side and stars on the other sounds way better, even if it was cold and damp. [ She furrows her brow, giving the illusion of thinking hard. ] And green. For some reason I imagine everything being vaguely green.
It's not damp. [ Ew, Claire, then it'd mold. ] It's a very well up castle. [ And like. The only place he's ever been able to call home, even considering how resentful he is of the damn place most of the time. ] It is a bit green in decor, though, yes.
Can you stop reminding me that you live in a castle? [ She seems suitably upset about having to make this request. ] Six-year-old Claire is getting very jealous every time it gets brought up.
[ Claire twists, rearranging her legs a little so that she can more easily stretch them out, now that she's not so cold. Her shirt follows in turn, riding up just a bit and catching on the mattress so that she can very quickly tell the difference between skin, sheet, and bandage. She looks behind her, which twists her neck at a weird angle, and then maneuvers so that she can roll halfway and land on her back. Her shoulder bumps his arm out of the way, and she carefully circles her fingers around his wrist so that the bandage stands out against his skin. ]
So what happened?
[ Probably she doesn't anticipate how disorienting it's going to be going from discussing castles to discussing the Dark Mark. ]
Severus is quiet while he adjusts enough to be able to slip his other hand free. There's no rush with this, and the fact that he isn't saying anything to preface it is... well, not so ominous, maybe, but not indicative of anything good, either. Especially about something that's supposed to be a long story.
He tucks the tips of two fingers beneath the bandage near his wrist and tugs gently, causing it to unfurl and slide away as though it was never stuck to begin with. (Magic.) He flexes his hand and twists his forearm slightly to expose the red and black nanite tattoo, stitched into his skin just alongside something else. From the inside of his elbow to nearly and inch above his palm is a stretched and angry-looking design, a human skull with its jaw stretched wide, a snake crawling from the mouth and down his arm. It's not quite a scar or a burn, but some awful in-between thing; Severus knows that it's slightly darker now than it was last jump, thanks to Draco's appearance.
The magic within it is dead, but the connection will forever be there, permanently tying him to the monster that cast the spell. ]
This brand Marks me as a Death Eater. I belong to the Dark Lord, and am bound to him by this. Were he here, it would burn black.
[ In a way, Claire has a feeling that she knows what it is long before he even removes the bandage, maybe before she even asked him about it in the first place. Of course she could have no ideas of the specifics, any of the details surrounding it, what it might look like and how cold it would feel to actually see what was beneath the bandage, but, looking at it, Claire acknowledges it with a certain level of satisfied expectation. There was always going to be something underneath that wasn't pleasant and probably had a lot to do with the things that he's told her. Seeing it outlined and colored so plainly makes it that much more real. ]
It looks like it hurt. It looks like someone branded you.
[ Obviously she's aware that it's much more than that, but her frame of reference still relies on what she's seen in person, and feels like it's an apt comparison. Maybe no one pressed a hot poker into him, but she can imagine that it was just as painful on any number of levels. You don't belong to anyone, she thinks she wants to say, but even in her head it sounds stupid and naive. A million other questions fly through her mind too quickly for her to catch on to just one of them. Instead, she presses her thumb into the open maw of the skull, tentative, like it might burn him. ]
[ Claire entertains the idea that she knows something about good and bad pain, but she knows that she could never consider it the same thing or even on the same playing field. Smoothing her thumb over the skin in an experimental swipe, she does expect it to be more raised than it is. She can definitely tell without looking where the Mark stops and his skin takes over, but it's less of a shift than she would have thought.
It isn't exactly the easiest thing to look at, and it would certainly raise a lot of questions, if not from people who knew anything at all about what he's done then at least from anyone who had some sort of interest in body art. ]
I can understand why you do. [ If he's adamant about covering it up around a bunch of strangers who wouldn't even know what it meant then it's just as likely that he wouldn't exactly be thrilled at the idea of having to explain it to anyone who asked. ] How old were you when it was done?
[ Severus doesn't want to talk about this, but he doesn't want to talk about anything concerning himself. His instincts of self-preservation buck up against saying anything at all. Still, he forces himself not to be tense, and looks at it through the distant lens of his mental exercises. ]
Seventeen.
[ Or was it sixteen. He doesn't bother correcting it. That year was a daydream from start to finish. ]
I wasn't the youngest among us. I thought... I'd be the last that young.
[ Fuck. He didn't want to talk about this either. ]
[ She can't imagine, at sixteen or seventeen - or maybe she can. This, though, she knows, goes beyond what she'd felt then or even what she feels now. Somewhere out there is a version of her who absolutely does understand that the world is shit and that bad things sometimes have to happen whether by someone your own ineffectiveness or your own hand, but Claire now is not that girl there. He was so young, and to have your mind made up about something like that at that kind of an age spells out a lot of concepts that have no strong tethers, allowing them to flap relentlessly in the back of her mind.
He offers her something else to concentrate on, thankfully, which is still a branch of the conversation itself but which doesn't address him so directly, doesn't make him the focal point. That in turn means that she doesn't have to stop and consider the fact that she is literally in bed with someone who has killed people and how it still doesn't matter the way people would want or expect it to.
Claire feels her eyebrows crease in the center, a little, not confused but trying to search for the answer in his face when she doesn't even know the options. All she has is the question. ]
How much younger?
[ She still has her thumb pressed to the mouth of the skull, but she slides it down to press the entirety of her palm into his forearm, wondering how big the mark is by comparison. ]
[ Silence, for a while. Severus is looking at his arm and not her; his mind casts about for how he's supposed to react, and suddenly he feels claustrophobic, nearly suffocating, whatever response he should have had at Draco at the time suddenly sneaking up to knock the wind out of him.
Severus disentangles himself and sits up, leaning forward to cover his face with his hands. He pushes his hair back and forces himself to breathe, slow and deliberate and not heaving - it wouldn't look like anything on someone else, but for someone who has to schedule his daily facial expression half the time, it's jarring. ]
My friend's son is here. [ The f-word sounds strange and feels stranger on his tongue. ] Grown.
[ Her mouth forms around a quiet okay but it doesn't ever make it beyond the planning stages. As supportive of the conversation as she wants to sound - because she does want to know, and in some way she sort of feels like she has a right, given their entanglement, just as she's capable of acknowledging that someday she's going to have to tell him unpleasant things about her life, too - it's hard to make just one syllable sound correct when someone is pulling back by degrees.
He moves, unwinds himself, and Claire expects him to get up entirely and cut it all short in some way. He doesn't, so she keeps very still, thinking that maybe the rustling of bedding, a reminder that he isn't the only person here, might prompt him into bristly silence. It's the rise and fall of his shoulders and tension marching up and down his spine, the scrub motion of his hands over his face, that make up her mind for her, and Claire sits up as well, behind him so that he doesn't have look at her directly if he doesn't want to. ]
What's his name? [ She asks it, and it somehow comes out sounding like I'm sorry. ]
I feel like an idiot. [ - is not the kid's name. Obvious. Severus pinches the bridge of his nose, hard, trying to distract the chemicals in his brain from pitching him past the point of no return. ]
Draco Malfoy. [ Deeep breath in and out. Quietly. ] He was still drawing on walls and throwing food when I saw him last. His parents, I thought-- their child.
What's worse? The idea that they let their baby do this, or the idea that they couldn't stop it? This war - if I can't keep children from this, why are we even bothering.
[ Her voice is firm, still behind him. Claire understands all about taking responsibility that's not rightfully yours onto your shoulders whether people expect you to or not, and convincing yourself otherwise is always almost an impossibility. ]
Maybe they were doing it to protect him. [ She recognizes that there's always a choice, but she also knows that if it were her, her father would do whatever it took it if it meant keeping her alive and safe. And she knows that she would do the same thing. ] Maybe Draco was doing it to protect them. [ Maybe he did it because it was expected, and because resisting was too terrifying of a prospect to entertain. ] You can't assume responsibility for monsters, and not everyone has the ability to say no, or the option. A lot less have the ability to do what you've done. Bad things happen, especially during war. You fight so that they don't happen anymore.
[ No one knows that bad things happen during war more than Severus. He's done plenty of those bad things - on both sides; and he will do more, more than he even knows, because it's necessary, and because no one else can do them. He's the one getting his hands dirty so that the rest of them can die honorably. ]
Any child having to go through that-- is an absolute failure on my part.
[ She tries to follow the timeline of events as prescribed by his narrative but has to ask for clarification all the same. ]
Draco? When he got here?
[ She's not going to make excuses for him, because she knows that Severus won't want to hear them, so there's no maybe it was disorientation or maybe he was startled to see you so much younger. Claire wouldn't believe them if she said them anyway. She might never have lived through any of it, but she has a decent idea of how shitty everything is in their lives, and there isn't room for excuses in all of that bleakness.
She'll leave the rest of what she wants to say until after. For now, she still lingers out of his direct line of sight. ]
It was days after. He'd been in hiding. [ So, while Claire was in the hallways. Severus scrubs one hand over his face, forcing himself to stop freaking out like a fucking moron. ] He was on edge the entire time like I was going to attack him. He'd assaulted a woman in the medbay after the jump. I have to bloody make him go return her things.
[ Having drawn up her legs and folded them underneath the blanket, Claire leans her elbow on her knee and presses the seam of her mouth into the palm of her hand. The picture that she is getting of this person is obviously very charming, but she can't help but admit that's a legitimate reaction to waking up somewhere you are completely unfamiliar with, finding yourself surrounded by strange things and strange people. Claire had spent a few disorienting hours - and time after - convinced that everything here was some elaborate government punishment, after all. That doesn't excuse it, just might explain it. ]
I'm sorry that - [ She wasn't around, that she doesn't understand things pertaining to this implicitly, without the necessary explanation. ] Has he been less afraid since then?
[ Of Severus. Of the ship. Of anything. Claire can't begin to know because she doesn't know him. ]
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When she does wake up, briefly, Claire doesn't stop to consider the possibility. Her alarm goes off after three hours, and she hovers in between awake and asleep long enough to send a message to whoever it is keeping an eye on the dogs in comms, asking them to please keep them a little while longer, she's so tired, drop them off back at the room and please feed them, etc. She doesn't drift off completely again until the unit chirps in affirmation, and then it's back under, submerged once again.
Waking up for good is a slow process, and she hasn't moved very much in almost eight hours so while her bones don't ache, everything weirdly still feels stiff. For a while, she fights with this new conscious state, rejecting it in favor of the alternative. Eventually she extracts a hand from where it's been curled into a ball between them and scrubs at her face, pushing a substantially larger amount of hair back from her eyes and nose than was there when she laid down to begin with. ]
Good morning. [ Bleary. Eyes closed. She hopes her breath doesn't stink and she just manages to avoid a typical morning stretch while still in such close proximity. ] How long was I asleep?
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[ Maybe Severus had half-opened his eyes during the alarm interruption, but sensing no need to panic, instantly dropped back off. Otherwise he was useless, unconscious weight. ]
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Alarm went off. I didn't feel like getting up. [ She yawns, still only approaching the idea of being wholly awake. ] Had to make sure the dogs were okay.
[ The blankets are too warm for her to jeopardize letting any of the cold air in from outside, so Claire gets one of her arms under his and draws her knees up almost to her chest, pressing up against him and not bothering to be hesitant about it. Conversation comes to her in snipped fragments from the hours prior to falling asleep. She hasn't forgotten about the bandage even without having to look at it. ]
You sleep okay?
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Mmhm. [ Settled with his arms around her again, since neither are going anywhere, apparently. ] I haven't been awake for too long.
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I'm awake. [ In case anyone other than her needed clarification. ] Not that I'm complaining right now, but did you know that your room is really cold?
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I can fix it if you like.
[ Next time? ]
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Maybe later. [ At the moment the only part of her that's actually cold at all is her nose. The cocoon they have managed to somehow carve out does okay in keeping everything else warm, and in the interest of making sure that he doesn't get up to fix it, Claire gathers up some of his shirt in the curl of her fingers. ] Who put a dorm in a dungeon anyway?
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My view at Arlington was of a tree and a bunch of other dormitories. Water on one side and stars on the other sounds way better, even if it was cold and damp. [ She furrows her brow, giving the illusion of thinking hard. ] And green. For some reason I imagine everything being vaguely green.
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[ Claire twists, rearranging her legs a little so that she can more easily stretch them out, now that she's not so cold. Her shirt follows in turn, riding up just a bit and catching on the mattress so that she can very quickly tell the difference between skin, sheet, and bandage. She looks behind her, which twists her neck at a weird angle, and then maneuvers so that she can roll halfway and land on her back. Her shoulder bumps his arm out of the way, and she carefully circles her fingers around his wrist so that the bandage stands out against his skin. ]
So what happened?
[ Probably she doesn't anticipate how disorienting it's going to be going from discussing castles to discussing the Dark Mark. ]
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That.
Severus is quiet while he adjusts enough to be able to slip his other hand free. There's no rush with this, and the fact that he isn't saying anything to preface it is... well, not so ominous, maybe, but not indicative of anything good, either. Especially about something that's supposed to be a long story.
He tucks the tips of two fingers beneath the bandage near his wrist and tugs gently, causing it to unfurl and slide away as though it was never stuck to begin with. (Magic.) He flexes his hand and twists his forearm slightly to expose the red and black nanite tattoo, stitched into his skin just alongside something else. From the inside of his elbow to nearly and inch above his palm is a stretched and angry-looking design, a human skull with its jaw stretched wide, a snake crawling from the mouth and down his arm. It's not quite a scar or a burn, but some awful in-between thing; Severus knows that it's slightly darker now than it was last jump, thanks to Draco's appearance.
The magic within it is dead, but the connection will forever be there, permanently tying him to the monster that cast the spell. ]
This brand Marks me as a Death Eater. I belong to the Dark Lord, and am bound to him by this. Were he here, it would burn black.
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It looks like it hurt. It looks like someone branded you.
[ Obviously she's aware that it's much more than that, but her frame of reference still relies on what she's seen in person, and feels like it's an apt comparison. Maybe no one pressed a hot poker into him, but she can imagine that it was just as painful on any number of levels. You don't belong to anyone, she thinks she wants to say, but even in her head it sounds stupid and naive. A million other questions fly through her mind too quickly for her to catch on to just one of them. Instead, she presses her thumb into the open maw of the skull, tentative, like it might burn him. ]
Does it hurt now?
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It's accurate.
Severus lets her touch him and doesn't flinch; the skin feels less puckered and raised than it looks like it should. ]
I'll feel it if it ever burns, but it's a sensation that's wholly different from physical pain. Good and bad.
I know there's no point in covering up.
[ Yet he does - and doesn't bother explaining why. It's private. ]
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It isn't exactly the easiest thing to look at, and it would certainly raise a lot of questions, if not from people who knew anything at all about what he's done then at least from anyone who had some sort of interest in body art. ]
I can understand why you do. [ If he's adamant about covering it up around a bunch of strangers who wouldn't even know what it meant then it's just as likely that he wouldn't exactly be thrilled at the idea of having to explain it to anyone who asked. ] How old were you when it was done?
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Seventeen.
[ Or was it sixteen. He doesn't bother correcting it. That year was a daydream from start to finish. ]
I wasn't the youngest among us. I thought... I'd be the last that young.
[ Fuck. He didn't want to talk about this either. ]
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He offers her something else to concentrate on, thankfully, which is still a branch of the conversation itself but which doesn't address him so directly, doesn't make him the focal point. That in turn means that she doesn't have to stop and consider the fact that she is literally in bed with someone who has killed people and how it still doesn't matter the way people would want or expect it to.
Claire feels her eyebrows crease in the center, a little, not confused but trying to search for the answer in his face when she doesn't even know the options. All she has is the question. ]
How much younger?
[ She still has her thumb pressed to the mouth of the skull, but she slides it down to press the entirety of her palm into his forearm, wondering how big the mark is by comparison. ]
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Severus disentangles himself and sits up, leaning forward to cover his face with his hands. He pushes his hair back and forces himself to breathe, slow and deliberate and not heaving - it wouldn't look like anything on someone else, but for someone who has to schedule his daily facial expression half the time, it's jarring. ]
My friend's son is here. [ The f-word sounds strange and feels stranger on his tongue. ] Grown.
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He moves, unwinds himself, and Claire expects him to get up entirely and cut it all short in some way. He doesn't, so she keeps very still, thinking that maybe the rustling of bedding, a reminder that he isn't the only person here, might prompt him into bristly silence. It's the rise and fall of his shoulders and tension marching up and down his spine, the scrub motion of his hands over his face, that make up her mind for her, and Claire sits up as well, behind him so that he doesn't have look at her directly if he doesn't want to. ]
What's his name? [ She asks it, and it somehow comes out sounding like I'm sorry. ]
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Draco Malfoy. [ Deeep breath in and out. Quietly. ] He was still drawing on walls and throwing food when I saw him last. His parents, I thought-- their child.
What's worse? The idea that they let their baby do this, or the idea that they couldn't stop it? This war - if I can't keep children from this, why are we even bothering.
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[ Her voice is firm, still behind him. Claire understands all about taking responsibility that's not rightfully yours onto your shoulders whether people expect you to or not, and convincing yourself otherwise is always almost an impossibility. ]
Maybe they were doing it to protect him. [ She recognizes that there's always a choice, but she also knows that if it were her, her father would do whatever it took it if it meant keeping her alive and safe. And she knows that she would do the same thing. ] Maybe Draco was doing it to protect them. [ Maybe he did it because it was expected, and because resisting was too terrifying of a prospect to entertain. ] You can't assume responsibility for monsters, and not everyone has the ability to say no, or the option. A lot less have the ability to do what you've done. Bad things happen, especially during war. You fight so that they don't happen anymore.
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[ No one knows that bad things happen during war more than Severus. He's done plenty of those bad things - on both sides; and he will do more, more than he even knows, because it's necessary, and because no one else can do them. He's the one getting his hands dirty so that the rest of them can die honorably. ]
Any child having to go through that-- is an absolute failure on my part.
He was terrified of me.
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Draco? When he got here?
[ She's not going to make excuses for him, because she knows that Severus won't want to hear them, so there's no maybe it was disorientation or maybe he was startled to see you so much younger. Claire wouldn't believe them if she said them anyway. She might never have lived through any of it, but she has a decent idea of how shitty everything is in their lives, and there isn't room for excuses in all of that bleakness.
She'll leave the rest of what she wants to say until after. For now, she still lingers out of his direct line of sight. ]
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[ Mistakes Have Been Made etc ]
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[ Having drawn up her legs and folded them underneath the blanket, Claire leans her elbow on her knee and presses the seam of her mouth into the palm of her hand. The picture that she is getting of this person is obviously very charming, but she can't help but admit that's a legitimate reaction to waking up somewhere you are completely unfamiliar with, finding yourself surrounded by strange things and strange people. Claire had spent a few disorienting hours - and time after - convinced that everything here was some elaborate government punishment, after all. That doesn't excuse it, just might explain it. ]
I'm sorry that - [ She wasn't around, that she doesn't understand things pertaining to this implicitly, without the necessary explanation. ] Has he been less afraid since then?
[ Of Severus. Of the ship. Of anything. Claire can't begin to know because she doesn't know him. ]
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i'm sorry these are all so short i feel like a tool
damn it claire you're a terrible person
noooooooooooooo
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