13 Days: Day 12. If he had known

Annnnnd this wasn't what I intended to write when I started out with this pairing, but I like writing Blaise feels because he makes it so hard to tell he has them.

Blaise watched Draco sleep and he knew it was only his years of cultivated silence and stealthiness that allowed him to go undetected. Even so, Draco had become such a light sleeper that Blaise didn't stand a chance watching him for long.

If he'd known everything, all that Draco faced in sixth year and beyond, things might have gone differently. Blaise considered it his greatest intellectual failure that he didn't know Draco's wasn't making his own decisions then, that he hadn't chosen his path. It was his own greatest failure, a bitterness on his lips, his tongue, his mind. He failed to know and Draco paid the price.

If he'd known, he wouldn't have stayed impassive, withdrawn, uninvested. As it was, it was difficult enough to watch Draco go down a path Blaise didn't want for him, not realizing Draco didn't want that path himself. Draco hadn't wanted to be a Death Eater, not once that he knew what it was like. But he was paying for his father's failure, and there was no way out.

A string of failures surrounded the mess, and as Blaise exhaled slowly, Draco stirred. He didn't wake, not yet, and Blaise frowned. Draco's skin was finally regaining its healthy pallor, the porcelain Malfoy skin he so longed to mark and claim. It wasn't the sickly, prison-induce paleness inflicted on him by Azkaban, but that was only on the surface. Remnants, scars, and memories of Azkaban ran deep and Draco would remember them for many years to come.

Blaise spent years of his own cultivating a plan, one that could not be traced back to him, one that freed Draco, and one that would get him his revenge. Soon, he thought. Not soon enough.

If he'd known, things would be different, he was certain. But he had no idea if they would be any better.