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The last traces of snow are still on the ground when they come for him. In the courtyard where sunlight rarely falls nothing is moving; even the buzzards have moved on to cry over some other barren patch of rock.
Ron’s knees hit the ground with a sickening crunch. The robes that brush carelessly against him are starched and stiff, not the cheap grimy garb of the guards, and he tries to focus on that, on what it might mean, rather than on the ridge of shattered bone beneath his kneecaps, or the smears of rusty red across grey granite slabs.
He’s not a fool; he knows what this is, and he’d brace himself for a blow if his body would cooperate, but it’s chosen now to panic and he just can’t stop breathing, great clumsy gulps, as if his lungs understand it may be their last chance. The air is sharp, an intoxicating scrape that hollows him out — his mouth, his throat, his stomach, his bones. The sky is empty, ice blue all around save the short, staccato clouds he’s setting free.
All in all, there are worse days he could die.
“Twenty galleons,” says a voice he can’t quite place. “And not a knut more.” A stick, or maybe a cane, thumps the ground impatiently as coins clink out, and the precise tap of boot heels echoes across the yard.
“Stingy bastard,” mutters the man who pulls him to his feet, and there’s a ripple of agreement. “But you didn’t ‘ear me say that.”
Laughter follows them across the slippery yard, and they’re moving too fast for Ron’s aching legs to keep him upright all the way. It’s months since he walked further than a short length of chain will allow, over a year since he was able to stand upright, and he’s forgotten how to make use of the space that’s out there in the real world.
They’re almost at the gates when he sees her lying there. A thick tangle of dark hair frames a porcelain-pale face, so innocent that he longs to touch her; needs to see if that pearly sheen on her skin is life or just a trick of the morning dew.
His feet keep moving, but the courtyard fades away, and he’s seven, maybe eight, he’s not sure, and trying to dart into the slushy edges of Diagon Alley to pick up a discarded doll. “You don’t know where it’s been!” his mother yells, tugging him along behind her. He protests that it’s new, that Ginny or some other little girl will treasure it, and that it’s a crime to just leave it there, but he has no choice but to go, leaving the last of the snow to melt into her hair, and sparkle on her unblinking eyes.
“Get a move on, boy,” a rough voice rumbles, and a shove propels him through the gates and down to the rocky shore.
He’s forgotten the girl before they reach land.
**
“These are the rules,” the voice says, and the footsteps stop. Ron can see shiny boot tips and the tap tap of a cane; nothing more, as he can’t think of a good reason to raise his head. The boots turn, and disappear from view.
“You will keep yourself clean.”
Step, step, tap.
“You will eat what you are given.”
Step, turn.
“You will not leave the house.”
Step, step, tap.
“I will not–,” Ron mumbles under his breath, trying to remember, but the man isn’t listening.
“Look at me, Mr Weasley.”
Ron struggles to raise his eyes, and makes it as far as silver buttons glinting on an embroidered waistcoat before an impatient hand jerks his chin up. The man knows his name, and his face… his face is as familiar as the white gloved hand that curls around the handle of his cane.
He knows that far-off smile too. It’s spring and the grass is lush beneath their feet, the smell of leather and broom polish in the air, and his fingers are twisted in a pale boy’s collar while he yells and pulls away. Ron has never wanted to punch anyone so much in his life, but someone, two someones are holding him back.
“I’ll get you for this, Malfoy!” he shouts, and his voice is harsh, unforgivably vulgar and out of place in this hushed, elegant room. Over the man’s shoulder he can see the same angry face, flushed pink in the whiteness. Draco Malfoy.
“I picked you!” Draco takes a step forward, but there’s no purpose in his movement, no control. Not like… Lucius, that’s it.
Ron doesn’t need to remember much of Lucius Malfoy to understand the tingle of fear that runs through him when Lucius straightens his gloves.
“I saved you, Weasley,” Draco says, and even if the sulk in his voice suggests it’s true, Ron is never going to believe anything a Malfoy says.
Until Lucius leans closer, his smile still not reaching cold grey eyes.
“Unfortunately, Mr Weasley,” he says pleasantly, in a voice too low for his son to hear. “The last thing you are is saved.”
**
There are never enough bathrooms when you have six brothers and sisters.
“Why do I have to do this down here?” Ron wails, the scratchy old sponge flaying his skin, the kitchen fire’s heat making him wriggle in the old tin bath. Every footstep on the stairs is an older brother who will burst in and make fun of his skinny arms and legs – or worse, it could be Ginny.
“The sooner you let me wash you,” his mother says, pulling his hands away from where they’re cupped over his groin, “the sooner we’ll be done.”
There’s no wall around the Burrow though; no peacocks scratching aimlessly at a gravel path, no tangle of ancient ivy cluttering the window ledges and shutters, still winter-tough and dry.
His hands flail and slip on marble smoothness when he struggles to get out of the bath, but it’s not that, or the cold air from outside a shock against his nakedness that stops him dead, one hand against the thrumming knot of pipes. In this room there is a stranger, as naked as he is. More naked, even; skin torn, bruises stark as the hollows under his eyes, and if that’s the price of fighting back then maybe Ron should just let them wash him.
Maybe Ron could save him, this stranger, if he keeps their captor’s attention on him. He used to save people, didn’t he?
He thinks that’s what he did.
“What happened to him?” he asks the blonde woman with the sponge. She’s nothing like his mother, but her touch is the same.
“Him?” she asks, and her eyes flick towards the stranger only briefly before she helps him sit once more. She pushes a long strand of hair, more grey-white than blonde now that he looks, behind her ear with one damp hand. “I-I don’t really know.”
Her hand trembles when she dabs at his chest, his arms, his legs, his – he closes his eyes – limply floating dick — and the sponge is worse than he remembers it, because every contact scrapes him raw.
God, he must be filthy.
When he opens his eyes the water has dissolved into a soft haze of blankets, the edges of his vision frayed with shadows he can’t put a name to. The room is dim around him, the bed almost unbearably soft, and it takes a few moments before he can move a hand, grope around for a light. Candles flicker one by one, and each reveals another creature of the shadows – the dresser monster, lion-clawed and squat; the wardrobe giant, with its bare wood panels and screw holes on the front that draw Ron’s attention over and over, as if he should know what’s missing if he looks hard enough; the chair beast, a multi-headed hydra of serpents tamed so a mere human could rest his body against their strength.
But he’s the wild thing here. He’s the one padding across the floor and peeling off borrowed cotton skins to stand naked in the hallway. A breath caught at the end of the hallway catches his attention, and he turns towards the scent of musk and magic, head tipped back, muscles poised for flight at the sight of a weapon, a wand.
Malfoy’s hands are empty, his cane set aside and his fingers stretched wide, as if they are a net to hold his prisoner. This is his territory, but Ron has terror on his side, the memory of the boy in the bathroom, and he can’t ever be like him. The thought is enough to make him turn, force weary muscles to push him along, until he throws himself hopelessly at a final locked door.
He has to sleep now, his not-mother says, and her vanilla scent washes over him, more soothing than any magic. Although his lips move to say something it’s not his voice that answers, “Thank you, my dear.”
**
Ron isn’t sure how long he’s been in this new prison, but he doesn’t think to ask any dates. He has a measure of time passing now in any case; his weekly meeting with Lucius.
“Strip, Weasley,” is all he usually says when he calls him into his room, and Ron counts first the buds, then the blossoms, on the trees outside while he waits for the inevitable sigh and the dismissal that always follows it. He has no idea what Malfoy is looking for among his scars, or on his body, but whatever it is, he doesn’t seem to find it.
Narcissa is pleased with his progress, she tells him when they sit together in the garden room; he’s eating well, filling out his clothes, healing physically. He nods, although he has no idea what is wrong with him. It’s best to humour those who provide for you, even if you don’t know why.
There are seventeen blossoms on the cherry tree and twelve on the peach when Lucius changes the routine.
“Lie on the bed,” he says, and this time Lucius is the one staring out of the window.
The bed is softer than Ron’s, and the quilt has embroidery of some kind that his fingers can’t help picking at while he waits.
“So obedient,” Lucius says softly, without even turning. “How long did it take them to break you, Weasley?”
“I don’t—” Ron starts, and he doesn’t, he doesn’t know what that means, or why Lucius is unbuttoning his robes, but he doesn’t move. Lucius is even paler than he thought, long arms whiter than the plaster walls, the marble fireplace, the silk quilt Ron’s fingers are still working at nervously.
“I was there,” Lucius says. “I was there almost as long as you, and I know what it takes to make them stop.” His arms stretch up, undershirt peeling off in one long movement, and the criss cross of faded scars is visible. Under long johns, more scars, and when he turns there’s no pride in his pose, none of that Malfoy haughtiness visible.
He’s just a man, as naked and vulnerable as Ron.
“What does it take to make them stop, Mr Weasley?”
Ron doesn’t want to say it, but he needs Lucius to stop looking almost as much as he needs to be able to take his eyes off that pale body.
“You stop fighting,” he whispers, and at last he can look away.
Lucius sighs, and Ron is tensed for his dismissal, but it doesn’t come.
“Dress me,” he says instead, and that’s enough to make Ron look at him again.
“I think you’re well enough to earn your keep now, don’t you?”
Ron can’t argue with that, but he comes close when he finds out the extent of his new job. Dressing Lucius in the mornings is a perilous set of challenges, from learning how tightly to fasten his boots to learning to ignore the morning erection that greets him under the man’s nightshirt most days.
Usually by the time he’s helping Lucius into his underwear it’s gone down by itself, but sometimes, and he tries not to notice that it’s usually when he’s brushed against it in the course of his duties, he has to tuck it gently inside Lucius’s underwear and button it down – no easy task with garments as well-fitted as Lucius favours.
It’s hard not to notice that Lucius sleeps alone every night, yet there’s no shortage of tender looks between him and Narcissa. It’s only one day when she’s stood by the window throwing crumbs to the peacocks that he realises he’s never seen her set one foot outside the Manor since he’s been here.
“The Dark Lord exacts a high price for mistakes,” is all Lucius will say when Ron asks if she is unwell, if there’s anything he can do for her. She’s been kind, still is when he has time to sit with her. There’s a tremor in her hand when she sews for too long and sometimes she forgets to water her precious plants, but Ron interrupts her often enough to have her set aside her embroidery for half an hour here and there, and the plants are thriving by the time summer sets in despite her occasional neglect.
**
Ron didn’t think there were summers like this any more, not in a world run by the Dark Lord. The heat builds for days, and Ron spends his time opening windows, fetching cologne and fresh handkerchiefs for Narcissa, watching Lucius ignore beads of sweat on his temples as he works.
By the fifth day Lucius is snapping at every word, still scouring the papers for word of the Dark Lord, who Ron is relieved to see is showing no sign of returning from his rampage through Eastern Europe. It’s just a heat wave, not the end of the world, but it might as well be.
Ron stops leaving out nightshirts after Lucius throws them in the fire two nights running, with a disregard for cost (Ron’s seen the bills, he knows how much they pay for them) that he knows should disgust him. Lucius sleeps naked on top of his bed, and forbids Ron to enter until he’s called for in the mornings without giving any explanation for the change.
The storm breaks on a Friday evening.
It’s Ron who answers the door, but Lucius who finally lets them in. All Ron can do is stare, not at the soaking, gaunt man on the doorstep, but at the limp, soggy bundle in his arms. Hermione’s eyes are wide open and empty, but her cheeks are pink, her chest rising and falling.
Lucius’s hands are gentle, guiding him to a seat, helping Severus settle the shell that looks like Hermione next to him. She slips sideways, a little drool trailing down her chin.
“You shouldn’t have come here, Severus,” Lucius says, and Ron doesn’t know why. “It’s not—”
“It was either this or kill her – she could give the whole game away if she’s not in her right mind,” Snape snarled, water dripping from the end of his nose. “Draco is covering for me, he—”
“You—” Ron gets no further than that before he launches himself out of his chair, and maybe these bastards have done the wrong thing feeding him up because he’s going to rip that ugly, vicious bastard’s face off right fucking now. Anger vibrates through every part of him, and when Snape steps out of his reach the only thing he can do is grab the nearest object – nice lamp, that will do – and throw it as hard as he can towards the window.
“Ron!” someone shouts, and who the hell calls him that, nobody has called him that in years, it’s all Mr Weasley this, and Ronald that, and before that it was just a number for longer than he wants to remember.
It’s time he got some revenge for that too, and a chair (looks expensive, but what the fuck doesn’t around here) pays the price for that, splintering in a very satisfactory way across the piano, and if he’s lucky he might have chipped that a little too.
“They said—” Ron gasps out, dizzy with the joy of destruction, “They said—two fucking years ago they said she was dead.”
He never knew if she’d been buried in the vaults deep in the rock – even in death you didn’t often get to leave Azkaban once you were in – or whether they just left her out for the buzzards as they did sometimes. He’d heard the guards wager large sums on who lost their eyes first. In more lucid moments he had wondered if Hermione’s parents had been able to claim her body, bury her properly, but then he’d remember that chances were they still didn’t know they had a daughter.
The only relief he’d had was that the guards had never taunted him with details of her death. Not like they had with Harry.
“That’s what we wanted everyone to believe,” Snape says, somewhat unnecessarily.
“You could at least act fucking sorry!” Ron yells, because now the dam has burst he doesn’t know how to shore it up again.
“I am sorry,” Snape says, looking up sharply. “She was a damn good spy.”
“Spy?” Ron says, but Lucius is pulling Hermione’s thin coat aside. Although she’s thin too, it’s easy to see the soft swell of belly under her muddy dress.
“Rab never could keep his hands off the servants,” Narcissa whispers from the doorway. “And Bella…”
Nobody needed to say it.
“I’ll take care of her, Ronald,” Narcissa promises, and by the time Snape and Lucius have finished their conference she is clean, tucked up in bed in a white nightdress. There are flowers by the bed, roses.
She’d like those, he thinks, when they close the bedroom door on her.
“Ron?” He doesn’t turn at Lucius’s voice, just listens to the rain against the window. It’s heavier now, and the drawing room carpet will be ruined.
“We have a plan,” Lucius says, and “Severus thinks you can help.”
“Anything,” Ron promises, though he’s not making it to him. “Anything at all.”
**
Lucius conducts his how-to-survive-torture sessions as if they are sacred rites. No talking, follow my lead, do as I say. Everything planned out beforehand, rehearsed almost, and as it turns out it’s a good thing. Ron’s almost shy these days, now that his weekly inspections have been dispensed with, and he’s surprised at his reluctance to remove his clothes.
“You won’t want them on,” Lucius warns him, and it doesn’t take much thought to work out it will be easier to get him into the hot bath that’s waiting without them.
They’ve discussed the cuffs too, but Ron still wants to back away when Lucius straps them on, fastening his wrists to the headboard.
“Less chance of you hurting yourself,” Lucius says blankly, which is funny since he’ll be the one trying to hurt Ron, unless he’s very much mistaken.
And oh, he does hurt him.
Ron thinks of Narcissa while the pain wracks through him, because somewhere along the line she became his still silent place, something he’s never had before. She’s not quite a mother, not quite a friend, but when he’s done with this, when he’s bathed and dressed in a soft robe, he knows she’ll be waiting downstairs in companionable silence, and that’s what he needs to get through this.
“Crucio!”
That’s the Lucius he expected to see more of, the one that he can only see through blurring eyes, but enough to know that his jaw set in a determined snarl. Now it looks more like a mask than anything Ron has seen so far, more than the smooth white face he keeps in his dresser drawer.
“Crucio!”
He can do this. He can do it for Harry, who would do it in a heartbeat if he was here. He can do it for Hermione, and be grateful that he has other things on his mind than what the last few months might have been like for her.
He can do it.
“Crucio, crucio, crucio!”
He has his still and silent place, and although it’s an effort to shriek at the pain and hide from it at the same time, he knows the lesson is well learnt – fight back, show pain, and it will continue because sadistic psycho bastards really love that stuff. Stop, however, and you’re dead.
He’d been dead for years and hadn’t even known it.
“I can manage,” he says afterwards when Lucius helps him into a hot bath, but he can’t even reach for the washcloth because fuck his shoulder hurts. Lucius ignores him anyway, and the clear water hides nothing, so even if he didn’t wipe him down he’d see Ron’s reaction; Ron’s shame.
He can’t even be sure it’s not the pain, but he’s sure as hell never had this treatment after a prison beating, and he hasn’t even thought to give himself a bit of relief since god knows when, but just the lightest, gentlest touch on his over-sensitised skin and he’s harder than he can ever remember.
He even… god, he even pushes up once, into Lucius’s cloth-covered hand, and it’s a good thing Lucius probably thinks he’s still out of it from the pain because the way he ignores it, gently moving his hand away, would be mortifying otherwise.
“It’s not an unusual reaction,” he says, and Ron was wrong, it’s mortifying no matter what he does. “But it is useful.”
It’s only when Lucius outlines the plan that Ron realises he had never asked for any details before.
“There are a number of us working together on this,” Lucius tells him, and it’s almost funny that he won’t trust Ron enough to tell him how many. If this is true though, and Ron thinks it must be, he supposes he wouldn’t trust anyone either. “We have been ensuring trustworthy spies get as close as possible to the Inner Circle, but not many are willing to go in to get as close as we need. We won’t force anyone, but we need access to them at their most vulnerable, and we need it soon.”
The way Lucius coolly describes the life of a servant – slave, really – around the Dark Lord’s inner circle … it’s almost a relief to Ron that he can still feel shock. The cuffs Lucius uses on him make a whole new kind of sense to him now, and he could blush at how it never occurred to him before.
Ron might be inexperienced, but he isn’t stupid. “Most of the Inner Circle are male, aren’t they?” he asks, wringing out the washcloth for lack of anything better to do.
“They are.” Lucius looks him in the eye, but Ron can tell nothing from his expression. His face is as cool and blank as always when his eyes drift down to Ron’s erection and back again. “Is that going to be a problem?”
Ron thinks of Lucius’s pale body, more familiar than his own now that he hasn’t looked in a mirror in months. He thinks of Lucius’s hand on him, of his hand on Lucius’s cock when he dresses him. He thinks of Hermione, who still hasn’t spoken a word, still can’t use a bathroom on time or by herself.
He said he’d do anything, and he meant it, but it won’t help anyone if he panics when he’s in there.
“I don’t know,” he says, and when Lucius nods Ron has the feeling he understands.
“We can work on that,” Lucius says, and puts his hand back on Ron’s cock, without the washcloth this time, and without any warning. His fingers are long and skillful, and Ron may never be able to look at them again without blushing, or wondering how many times he’s done this.
When Ron’s hips buck up and he comes in short, sharp bursts over the cooling water, Lucius helps him out of the bath. He’s still damp when Lucius lays him out in the master bedroom, nerve endings still raw but limbs too limp to protest at being positioned so obviously, so clearly waiting to be fucked.
“Don’t need the cuffs,” he manages to say when Lucius lifts up one wrist to fasten the leather strap around it again.
“It will help if you’re used to it,” Lucius says, and fastens the buckle tightly. When both wrists are secured Ron thinks maybe it will help because he is used to it. Cuffs mean pain, and Lucius is going to hurt him in whole new ways, but he knows how to approach it, how to switch it off in his head, and this will be no different.
Lucius’s fingers are wet, slick with something when he spreads Ron’s buttocks and strokes between them. His touch is firm and sure, one finger and then two breaching Ron’s hole efficiently, pausing at every wince.
“They won’t use lubrication,” Lucius says, in the same clinical tone he used to explain the plan. “So I will reduce it each time we do this.” He twists his fingers at that, once, twice, and pulls them out, and Ron’s mouth is still open, trying to form a question that won’t come when he feels the bed dip, and cool hands part his buttocks once more. Something warm, hard and blunt pushes at him without success, but he feels it slip, correct its angle and try again, this time finding purchase in what a stretching, burning pain tells him is the right place.
Ron grunts in pain before he realises what he’s doing, but Lucius’s hand is sure on the back of his neck the moment the sound escapes him.
“That’s right,” he says, and his voice sounds tight and tense. “Let them think it hurts, they’ll like that, and it will be over sooner.”
It does hurt, Ron wants to say, but he’s sure that isn’t news to Lucius, whatever he says. The hand is still on his neck, just resting gently on the throb of his pulse, and he might be fooling himself but maybe this is just as hard for Lucius as it is for him.
Then Lucius pushes in all the way, and Ron remembers how much he hates him.
It’s too much. Too much pain, yes, but that’s not the worst. It’s too intimate, too invasive, and this is Malfoy’s father doing this to him, thrusting inside him, and what the hell is Ron doing just lying here taking it when he’s never thought of this before, of doing this with a man? But that’s nothing compared to the big picture, and he can see it all clearly now. Lucius gaining his trust, Snape bringing Hermione here, everything designed to push him towards making a choice that led to Lucius Malfoy’s bed—this choice that isn’t a choice at all.
He wonders if there is even a plan.
“Did you fuck her?” he grates out, because he has to ask now he’s thought it. “Did you fuck Hermione like this?”
Lucius thrusts one more time and comes, but he doesn’t answer until he’s pulled out of Ron and released him from the cuffs. At least he doesn’t try to lie, or choose a less vulgar word for what he’s done.
“Yes,” he says simply, and doesn’t try to dodge the punch. He doesn’t even look surprised. “You can leave, if you like,” he adds, hand over his eye, and Ron feels faintly ridiculous as his anger fades to a slow burn. “There are places you might be safe if you run far enough.”
“Or?” Ron isn’t sure what he wants to hear— if he’s just Lucius’s plaything that will be easy enough to leave behind, but if there really is a plan then he needs to consider far more than just himself.
“Or you help us bring the Dark Lord down.” Lucius sighs. “By whatever means we can.”
**
Ever the bad penny, Snape turns up on the night Hermione goes into labour.
Ron thinks it’s the worst timing ever until he hears what Snape has to say.
“There’s a gathering,” he says. “The Dark Lord is back, and we have a chance to get dozens of our people in at once.” He sneers a little, but Ron knows better than to take it personally by now. “As entertainment.”
“He’s not ready,” Lucius says immediately, but Ron knows it isn’t true, and all the hours he’s spent at Hermione’s bedside can’t bring her back for her child, but he can finish the job she started. And if he can’t, there will never be a better day to die trying.
“This way he’ll only need a few hours, not weeks.” Snape’s lip curls slightly at the way Ron moves to touch Lucius’s arm. “He’ll be back in your bed before you know it.” Snape doesn’t even flinch when Narcissa slaps him, but Ron enjoys seeing it all the same, and the look on his face when she pulls Ron close.
“Take care,” she says, and kisses his cheek softly. “Hermione will be safe here, whatever happens.”
The plan is simple, at least his part in it is, and Snape won’t tell him any more than he needs to know.
“Make sure I’m in one of the rooms inside the main compound, release my section of the spells at 4.am, and leave by the rear exit,” Ron repeats until Snape is satisfied. “Don’t wait for anyone, don’t talk to anyone, don’t stop for anything or I won’t make it out of there.”
Just walking through the gates of Voldemort’s stronghold sets every nerve in Ron’s body on fire, and he’s more grateful for Lucius’s lessons than he ever thought he would be.
Even Snape looks uncomfortable. “You get used to it,” he says, but his voice is laced with pain and his hand grips the Dark Mark tightly.
Ron finds that hard to believe, but at least there’s no danger of him falling asleep on the job, and if anything the pain is worse closer to the central chambers where he finds himself wriggling free of restraints at almost four in the morning. There’s no skin on his wrists when he’s finished, but he’s free, he has a wand there for the taking, and when it strikes four he can just find enough voice to perform the spells he memorised.
It’s only when he finishes and a crackling starts overhead that he thinks it might have been an idea to find some clothes before he started, but he’s not the only one naked and running for the doors when he slips out of the room. Most of them are way ahead, but as he runs one thin figure slumps against a wall, and Ron can see blood. Too much blood, he thinks, when he lifts up the boy’s head to see how conscious he is.
“Malfoy?”
“I knew you could do it, Weasley,” Draco says, before he crumples to the ground.
Ron swears, but Malfoy is still breathing and he can’t leave him there. Snape can go fuck himself with his orders. He barely makes it outside with the extra weight before the place erupts behind him.
**
From the outside it’s beautiful, a lightshow of black and white, green and red, swirling and intermingled in the air. Ron watches it rain ashes like dry teardrops on his skin while he Snape fusses over Draco’s wound right there on the hillside. He watches it from the safer vantage point of the garden room at the Manor for days after the explosions finish, Lucius on one side of him and Narcissa on the other, standing there for hours and hours and hours. Reports suggest the explosion was seen at least as far as Scotland to the north, and maybe as far as Romania, or even Hungary to the east.
Maybe those in hiding will realise it’s the sign they’ve been waiting for, maybe they won’t. Maybe there’s even another Voldemort waiting to step into the void, one that will fool them all until it’s too late. Maybe Ron gambled and lost, trusting Malfoy and Snape. Maybe it’s already too late.
All Ron knows is that when the ash stops falling and he steps out of the garden doors and into a new world, there is a hand in each of his.