Chapter Text
The blood drips drips drips, and Tom watches. Myrtle’s hand twitches with the last remnants of life leaving her. The basilisk has fled in fear, leaving the only breathing in the room of a hyperventilating teen. The teen’s eyes are blood red, and he shakes with the only emotion.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not yet.
“Tom you don’t have to do this” A voice comes from the side of the room, and looking up the teen sees a man with eyes as green as his are red. The man itches closer, but the teen brandishes his wand.
“You aren’t from the school.” He says smoothly. Though alarm bells ring in his brain, louder than the thrill that has echoed out into darkness. His hand reaches for his back pocket, he feels the ingredients still there. He must do this soon or not at all.
“Tom. I know what you did, you don't have to do this. It’s ok. We can forget this ever happened.” The man holds his hand as a sign of surrender, but tries to move closer.
“Who are you?” The teen demands, gripping his wand so hard the knuckles turn white. The teen straightens as if to impress a member of high society, and directs his full gaze on the man on the other side of the cold damp bathroom. The man holds his gaze.
“You can stop here Tom! Don’t kill any more people, you can move on from this. I know you can Tom.” The man looks soulfully into the eyes of the snake, willing with all of his immense caring to stop this.
“Why do you act like you know me? Who are you.” The teen says this calm, but the question turns to a demand, the objects around both of them rattle with magical stress, glowing a slight red.
“You can be great tom! You have the potential to be anyone you want! Why be this person, this version of you. Why waste your potential on this Tom? Why?” The man tears up at his own words, creating a show that the red eyes one views as fake. As a burning manipulation. As a lie.
“I am not wasting anything.” The teen growls, “I asked you a question though.” He directs a glare and raises his wand even more, “Who.” He blasts the man, pushing him back like a strong wave, “ ARE.” He is pushed back again, but several more meters as he is almost blown off of his feet. “YOU!” The man is thrown to the back wall, groaning in pain.
He groans in pain, standing up and brushing the dirt off of his robes, “I-” he hesitates for a moment, “I am a man who thinks you can do better Tom. Horcruxes are not worth it, please don't do this. Just step away Tom, just step away and you can leave all this behind. You go back to be a norma-”
The teen’s eyes widen and then flinch when the man hits the last word, his mouth twitches like an animal ready to bite, like somebody on the verge of destruction. “I’ll never be normal! I will never again be a nasty, dirty, mortal! I am to rule, I am superior then all these lesser beings! I was never normal, taunted mercilessly for being less, for being odd. For being Tom, that kid at the orphanage who nobody deemed it a good idea to ask what happened to Billy’s rabbit. Just send me back for another exorcism. THAT’LL HELP RIGHT! But not again, never again. I will show them what humanity is supposed to be. The dirt under my feet.” The teen steps back towards the corpse of the pathetic girl, taking something out of the pocket of his robes. A bottle full of dark black liquid, and a small black leather book. He flashes a feral and insane grin at the man.
“T-” The bottle and diary drop, causing a tornado of burning red magic. The man tries to step forward towards the tornado to stop it, but it ends before the blink of an eye. Every object stirred up by the wild magic stills in the air, hovering in perfect place. The man watches in horror as the teen seems to fall in slow motion, body pale and weak.
The man rushes to catch the quickly falling teen, bracing him from the impact of the cold marble floor, coated in the blood of his first victim. The teen is utterly relaxed, so horribly similar to a dead body, but with a faint rhythmic pulse echoing throughout his thin frame. The man can see the two pieces of soul fluttering like trapped butterflies, straining to reach each other with all of their energy. The man holds the fainted teen as he violently coughs up blood upon blood upon blood, each breath interlaced with pain greater than that of pouring the burning of plasma from the hottest sun. Like this, muses the man, he looks less human and more like a cast out god, defeated and dying, trying viciously to hold onto any last shred of life.
“Tom what have you done” The man murmurs into the air above his head, embracing him as he shakes with tremors. The teen’s face scrunches with pain.
He opens his eyes slightly and squints at the man, “I did what I had to”, he spits out like a curse, trying to shy away from the man but far too weak after the violent magic tearing him apart.
The man puts a hand to the face of the teen, “Oh Tom,” he says with regret and sorrow drawn out, causing the words to drip with despair like an ice cube melting under the light of a hot sun, “ you never had to do this. Nobody Ever has to do this.”
The teen finally manages to push away, hauling is torso upright into a sitting position, breathing heavy, but quickly improving. His magic wraps around him like a shield, “So when somebody dies it is a tragedy, but when I pursue life it makes it worse? What do you want? Me to die, or not!”
The teen coughs violently, so the man puts a hand on his back to steady him, “It’s not that Tom. We have a life, we live in this beautiful gift, and then we die. We all die in the end Tom, just as fate demands. Fate always wins in the end. And even so.” He looks directly into Tom’s eyes, Tom notices his eyes started to glow and tear, “An infinite life would be a horrifying experience worse than the greatest of tortues. Humans aren’t meant to live that long, your mind would break.”
“I can take it.” Tom tries desperately to stand up, and in the end the man helps him instead of letting his suffering prolong. As soon as he is standing he pushes away from the man, almost falling as he does, but righting himself by leaning on the sink. The sink. The man looks pleadingly at him, but he just glares at him with an intensity that could kill.
“Tom, listen to me.” The man stresses his words with an immense power, drawing Tom’s eyes and curiosity, but also his anger at being addressed as if he could be commanded. “It is not too late to turn back,” his eyes look with an anger, “you can rejoin your soul, and it will be like all this never happened. Just regre-”
“ Avada Kedavra ” A green light engulfs them both, brighter than a bomb’s explosion, coating everything sickly green. The man is thrown back on the ground like a beanbag. He looks almost to be sleeping, but his heart has stopped and his skin is sickly pale. A single tear is frozen on his face. Tom takes a moment to breathe, magic screaming in pain from using the curse.
“Pathetic. I didn’t even get to learn your name, what a shame.” Tom mutters breathlessly to the corpse on the ground, as if it can hear his every word.
He turns back around to the sink he was leaning on, staring directly into the eyes of the small engraved snake. His voice turns into a rough breathy hiss, :Open:
The sink widens to a giant metal tube, fresh blood coating the walls from a recent kill, causing a horrible and rotten stench. Without a second look the teen kicks the body of his attempted savior into the pit. He watches it slide down into the blackness of the abyss like so many of the animal carcasses he has sent before, though this one seems far more real.
The teen walks away from both his crimes exhausted, and with a grin on his face.