Disclaimer: I just borrowed them for torture.

Category: Darkfic, Drama/Angst

Pairing: Severus/Remus

Rating: PG-13?

Warning: Very dark, devoid of any hope and joy. I was quite depressed when I was writing this. 

Summary: Voldemort has won the war. What reason is there to live?

Joined in hell
By Ratwoman
ratwoman02@yahoo.de

"Severus." The faint whispering voice called him back to life.

Life was pain. Every muscle in his body hurt, his head throbbed. Severus wanted to return to blissful oblivion, but the voice whispered again, more urgently. 
"Severus!"
Snape opened his eyes. The dim light of the torches were blinding for a moment. 
"Sev?" 
Severus raised his head and looked through the curtain of his hair into the direction of the whispering voice.
Remus was clinging to the bars that separated their cells from each other, looking with desperate worry at Snape. When Severus looked at him, he stretched an arm through the gaps trying to reach him. 
Every movement hurt, but Severus crawled towards Remus and collapsed at the bars separating them. Remus reached through the gaps, carefully stroking Severus sweaty hair out of his face. 
"Oh Sev," he said sadly. "Why do they do that?" 
"Guess it's more fun than feeding us to the Dementors." Severus hissed. 
Remus' fingers stroked his cheek, soothing. 
Severus did not know how much time had passed since they had lost the war. Months? Years? 
It had started with the death of Dumbledore. Everyone was shocked, but believed that the boy-who-lived would save them. The boy-who-lived had a family by then; a wife, Cho Chung, and a one year old daughter. 
The similarity of the attack to the ones on his parents was quite ironic. Voldemort had tortured Ron Weasley, Harry Potter's secret-keeper, until he had told them where Harry and his wife were. 
(Until recently Ron Weasley had been confined in a cell in the same dungeon as Snape and Remus. Until he had crushed his own head on the iron bars because he couldn't live with the guilt.)
Next Voldemort had killed Potter's wife, ordered Lucius to kill Harry, in which he succeeded. Lord Voldemort had not done the same mistake as twenty years before; he had not tried to kill the baby, who was under a protection spell. Instead, he had adopted it. 
Little Lillian Potter was renamed into Lady Lilith Voldemort, and grew up as the Dark Lord's daughter. The perversity of it made Snape shiver. 
After the death of the Potters it had been a matter of days until Lord Voldemort had conquered the wizarding world. He had broken the witches and wizards' hopes, their will to resistance. Many simply gave up, many changed sides, many died in a last hopeless battle. 
Severus envied those who had died on the field - Black, Minerva, Hagrid, Miss Granger. Severus also envied those who had been executed right after Voldemort's victory - Neville Longbottom, the Parvati sisters, and many others. Severus knew even then that Voldemort kept alive those he wanted to punish most gravely. 
Since the defeat Severus was confined in this dirty cell, in a dungeon together with those who had been leaders in the opposition. Now they were something like ... toys for the Death Eaters. Not one day passed when not one of them came down into the dungeon, to beat, hex, torture or rape one of the prisoners. 
Actually, Severus even envied his fellow prisoners. As the traitor, he was the one the Death Eaters hated most, the one who got most visited. 
Remus was still stroking his cheek. Severus forced himself to smile up at him, to pretend that he was fine.
At the beginning of his confinement Severus had tried to starve himself, but Voldemort had put him under the Imperius and forced him to eat. 
If he could at least bargain... if he could bargain to brew them potions for a improvement of his conditions, of for an allowance to give Remus the Wolfsbane. Unfortunately, they had Draco, and Draco Malfoy could brew any potion they needed. Snape wondered whether they knew that Draco sometimes brought pain-stoppers to the prisoners. He wondered whether Draco knew that he was just prolonging their suffering. Some of the prisoners could be dead by now if it wasn't for Draco's medicine. 
However, without Wolfsbane, Remus transformed every full moon, smashing himself against the bars trying to get to the human flesh that smelled so temptingly. A particularly cruel memory was the full moon night when Macnair and some of his friends had locked a Muggle child into the same cell as Remus and watched him tear it to pieces. Worst was, the horrified look on Remus' face when they had put the child into his cell, knowing that he would transform any second. 
The next morning Remus had tried to smash his head as Ron Weasley had done. 
Yet, each full moon night was a temptation for Snape. He desired nothing more than to press his body against the bars where the werewolf could reach him, slash his body and end his miserable life. 
The reason why Severus didn't do that was that Remus would be alone then. And he couldn't leave him alone in that hellhole.