Draco watched Seventeen carefully, his eyes narrowing as she delivered another biting remark. Her voice, sharp and laced with sarcasm, cut through the air, but Draco wasn't fooled. He could see the cracks, the tiny fissures in her cold, indifferent mask.
She was pretending. She had to be.
["Seven was her nickname."] He realized.
Seventeen—no, Seven—had always been hard to read. From the moment they'd met, but now she'd wrapped herself in that ice-cold armor, keeping everyone at a distance, cutting them down with her sharp tongue. Something had shifted. He'd seen glimpses of her humanity, moments where her façade slipped just long enough for him to catch a glimpse of the woman underneath. The one she was so desperate to hide.
And now, as she stood there, dismissing everything and everyone around her, Draco couldn't shake the feeling that this was all an act—a way to protect herself from the truth she didn't want to face.
She cared. He knew she cared.
He'd seen it in the way her eyes softened, just for a second, when Noah appeared. In the way her voice wavered, barely noticeable, when she mentioned the Ophiuchus district. She was trying so damn hard to convince herself that she didn't need them. That she didn't need him.
But she was wrong.
As Noah and Lilith spoke to her, Draco couldn't tear his eyes away from her face. Her expression was perfectly controlled, but there was something else there—something beneath the surface. Fear? Guilt? Regret? He wasn't sure, but it was there, lurking behind her cold words and biting sarcasm.
["Who had been the woman who tricked her with the letters? Why had she been avoiding her? What ties did this woman have in her past? Why did she unsettle her so much?"]
"Funny," she said, her voice dripping with mockery. "I seem to remember being the one doing all the heavy lifting. But sure, let's pretend we're all in this together."
Draco clenched his jaw, his frustration building. She was pushing them away again, building those damn walls around herself, just like she always did. But this time, it was different. This time, he wasn't going to let her get away with it.
Because he didn't believe for a second that she hated them. Not after everything they'd been through. Not after the way she'd fought for them, protected them, even when she didn't have to.
No, Seventeen didn't hate them. She was scared. Scared of what it meant to let people in. Scared of what it meant to trust them. And maybe… scared of what she was feeling, too.
Draco's thoughts flickered to their recent encounters—the tension, the unspoken words, the electricity between them, the kiss. He hadn't missed it, and he was pretty damn sure she hadn't either. But every time they got too close, every time things started to feel real, she pulled away. Threw up her defenses. It was like a game of cat and mouse, and Draco was getting tired of chasing her.
As Noah laid out the plan to return to the land where those of Ophiuchus lived which he simply referred to as "the city", Draco couldn't help but feel a knot of anticipation in his gut. Ophiuchus—the place they were supposed to be safe, where they could train, regroup, figure out their next steps. He wasn't sure how he felt about it. On the one hand, he knew they needed time to prepare, but on the other, the idea of being so isolated, so cut off from everything… it made him uneasy.
Still, it was the best option they had after all they caused in Downtown Zodiac. And maybe, just maybe, being in a place that meant so much to Seven would force her to confront whatever the hell was going on inside her.
He shifted his weight, crossing his arms over his chest, watching her as she responded with her new nonchalance. "Whatever. Just tell me where I need to be."
Draco's teeth clenched at the emptiness in her words. She was deflecting again, distancing herself from the group, from him. He stepped forward, his voice low but firm. "You know, at some point, you're going to have to stop pretending you don't give a damn about any of this."
She didn't even turn to look at him. "I'm not pretending. I don't care."
"Bullshit." The word left his mouth before he could stop it, but he didn't care. He was done tiptoeing around her walls. "You wouldn't be here if you didn't care. You wouldn't have brought us here. You wouldn't have fought so hard to keep us alive."
Finally, she turned, her green eyes locking with his, cold and unyielding. "I did what I had to do. It wasn't personal."
Draco's fists tightened at his sides. He stepped closer, closing the distance between them, his voice lowering as he spoke. "You think you're so damn good at hiding it, don't you? You think none of us can see what's really going on inside your head. But I see it. I see you, Seven. And you're scared. You're terrified of letting anyone in. Of letting me in."
Her eyes flashed with something—anger, maybe, or something deeper, something she wasn't ready to confront. But instead of backing down, she threw up her defenses again, her expression hardening into a sneer. "You don't know anything about me, De Lavissaye. Stop acting like you do."
Draco's gaze bore into hers, unwavering. "I know more than you think."
For a long moment, they just stood there, staring each other down, the air between them thick with tension. Neither of them moved, neither willing to back down. But Draco could feel it—something shifting, cracking beneath the surface. She was close. So damn close to letting that mask slip.
But then, just as quickly, the moment was gone.
Seventeen turned away from him, breaking the connection, her shoulders stiff with resolve. "This isn't about me. It's about the mission. We don't have time for your bullshit, De Lavissaye."
Draco felt a surge of frustration, but he didn't push further. Not now. Not here. There would be time. They were going to this city Noah mentioned, after all. They'd have time to train, time to figure things out. Time for him to break down those walls, one way or another.
Noah stepped forward again, addressing the group. "We leave at first light. It'll be a long journey, but we'll be safe once we're in the city. I promise you that."
Draco glanced at the others—Claus, Amelia, Light, Hunter, Sablina—all of them still reeling from the revelations, still trying to process everything. He knew they were struggling, just like he was. But he also knew that this was the only path forward. They didn't have a choice.
He looked back at Seventeen, watching as she interacted with Noah, her posture relaxing ever so slightly in his presence. It was subtle, but Draco noticed. She cared about them—about Noah, Lilith, Joshua, Cassie. She trusted them. He could see it in the way she stood, in the way her voice softened ever so slightly when she spoke to them.
It wasn't that she didn't care about him. She just didn't want to care about him.
["You're not fooling me, Seven,"] he thought, his gaze locked on her as the others prepared to move out. ["I see through you. And I'm not going anywhere."]
As the group began to settle in for the night, Draco lingered, his eyes never straying far from Seventeen. She might be the strongest person he'd ever met, but even she couldn't keep those walls up forever.
And when they finally came down, he'd be there.
"What's your name again?" Light asked Noah after a long moment in silence.
"Noah Whitlock," he spoke without looking at them. "This is my wife Lilith Duke, and these are her younger siblings, Joshua and Cassandra Duke."
"Whitlock?" Draco felt his heart freezing, he could tell his friends did too. ["The head of the rebellion our parents have been after? Who was thought to be a terrorist?"]
"You're a Whitlock?" There was an accusation in Light's voice as she questioned Seventeen.
"And you're a Valiant, so? My father never killed any of your family members, did he?" Seventeen hissed, fists clenched, not even sparing her a gaze. "You can't say the same."
"My father never,"
"Don't," for the first time, Joshua spoke, glaring at her, "don't you dare. If you don't know the truth, you better not say anything, Valiant."
"My parents would never punish innocents," she snapped.
Draco's body moved instantly, shielding his childhood friend from the girl who had claimed his heart. "Step away," she hissed, glaring up at him, nostrils flaring. "Step away, De Lavissaye."
But what he found in her gaze made him freeze, ["She's hurt."] "We're friends, don't do this, please," his voice was a whisper for her. "We don't know what happened, you are refusing to tell us."
She didn't listen. "Step. Away," she hissed. "Don't make me hurt you."
"You wouldn't," he said firmly.
"Don't test me, you'll be disappointed," she lowered her voice, eyes darkening.
"Seventeen," Hunter tried to help, coming to her right, fully shielding Light from her lethal gaze, "you know how Light cares for her father. It's not cool for you to just accuse them bluntly like that. Our parents are complicated, but they would never,"
"Kill innocents?" Her gaze was an emotionless void as she glared at Hunter, and for the first time, Draco felt fear... fear from her. "Explain the constant genocide of newborn babies born under the Ophiuchus constellation then," she took a step forward to him, chin up. "Explain."
"They are cursed," Sablina snapped behind them and Draco cursed mentally.
"Cursed?" Seventeen chuckled dryly. "I'm cursed? Father is cursed? Mother is cursed? Josh and Cassie are cursed? Jasmin Shadow's newborn baby was cursed?" She spit. "Do you even hear yourself?"
A long silence stretched between them, no one said a thing, until she broke it.
"Speak your mind. Call my father a terrorist. I dare you. Isn't that what your little parents told you? That Noah Whitlock was the leader of a rebellion of outsider terrorists infiltrated in the Zodiac to destroy your beautiful world? Say it. Isn't that what you're thinking?"
"Seven," Draco tried, pausing a hand on her shoulder softly.
She pushed him away, "Fuck you. Fuck all of you. Your parents are the terrorists. They murdered countless of my people. Innocents. Babies. Throwing them in the dark zones and painting it as them dying from some sickness."
"They... they wouldn't, they," Light stuttered.
"You know nothing. Nothing," she spit, angry. "You have no idea what I've been through. No idea of what I lost."
"It's not our fault, stop acting like it was," Claus snapped, frustrated. "How can we understand, if you don't tell us?"
"People like you would never understand," she scowled bitterly. "You disgust me. All of you do. Privileged spoiled brats. You are all hypocrites, full of bullshit. That's why it was so easy to manipulate you," her lips distorted in a vicious grin that made Draco sick. "Your parents manipulated your little minds your entirely life, no wonder it was so easy."
"That's not fair," Amelia snapped. "You're being mean. What choice do we had?"
"What choice did I had?" Seventeen snapped, her gaze wandering anywhere but at theirs, and Draco felt like she was drifting further away from him. "I told you this wouldn't work," she told Noah. "Good luck trying to make them be willing to help, I did my part," with that, she vanished in shadows.
["Shadows...?"] "That's a Scorpio ability," his voice was a haunted whisper.
"Seven is different than all of us," it was all Cassandra said.
"Did my father," Light began but halted, as if she couldn't finish and Draco noticed the fear in her voice.
"Let's get to the city first, nature is tricky out here," Noah spoke. "We will talk. When my daughter is ready to join us, she will. Forget what you've know of her as Serena, Seventeen is the complete opposite, however, you will come to see that she can be... peculiar to deal with, but reasonably. She carries too much."
"Why does she?" Draco asked, stressed with this whole thing, with how she was slipping away, in pain.
Noah finally met their eyes, his. "Because only she can."