Disclaimer: Anything you recognize isn't mine.
A/N: The first bit of fanfic I've written in about two months - apologies if it's awful, but concrit would be much appreciated. Written for the second round of Fanfiction Idol over on the HPFC Forum.
Embers
It is Amy Benson's sixteenth summer when she sees him for the last time.
The weather, as always, is dreadful. The courtyard of the orphanage – her grudging, dismal home – is lonely, dim, and abandoned. There are no trees to take refuge under, only scraggly, prickly half-dead bushes, no view to speak of except that of iron gates.
Amy hates it all. She hates the summer, too, come to that, hates the outside air, hot and stale (though not so much as the sound of water, hitting against the rock of a cave). However, it is her only escape, from the dark, sweltering confines of the orphanage, the cacophony of children's grotesque voices as they play with too-old, broken toys. She longs to break free of it and her past there, so very inherent in inescapable in the dry summer air, the stone building.
So here she stands, alone in the courtyard, in a fraying blouse and ripped gray skirt, leaning against the gates. She imagines the way she would look to any passersby – a girl very nearly grown up, tall and skinny as a bean pole, with scraggly, slightly greasy brown hair and wide-set eyes. She has never harbored any delusions about her appearances: as a child, she often wondered if her ugliness was why no one had ever come to claim her.
Reaching into a pocket, her thin, dirty fingers pull out a matchbox and a box of cigarettes – lifted from Dennis Bishop's 'secret' drawer – and lights up, puffing slowly in the stale and stagnant air. She takes a puff and starting to cough, is suddenly very grateful to be alone. She has only recently picked up the habit.
There is a sudden creak of the ancient door, and mid-cough she stops, gasping for breath, no longer because of the cigarette. She jumps, her heart beating very fast, hoping desperately that she can fade into the background…
She has forgotten to keep track of the days this year, forgotten that this is the first of September, and so Tom Riddle's day to leave. She has been avoiding him all summer, careful to never be alone, and he has gone along with it. She supposes he doesn't much care. She is nothing to him, just another person in a line of victims, forgotten but when he sees her in front of him, when he has the oppurtunity to hurt her. He will not remember her after he leaves, but she will never escape him.
Like always, she feels the blow to the gut at the sight of him, as the memory, always bubbling under the surface of her skin, floats to the forefront of her mind. She stumbles backwards, just managing to keep hold of her cigarette in her shaking right hand. The box of matches falls out of her pocket to the ground.
There is no hope of fleeing. He sees her; she can tell, from that glimmer in his eyes, the curve of that sadistic smile, the look of a predator surveying his unwilling prey. Not for the first time, she thinks how handsome he is, and the inescapable irony of that fact. The unfairness of it.
When he is five steps away, he meets her unwilling gaze for the first time. "Will you miss me, Benson?"
She flinches away, trying to tell herself that he will leave. He is about to leave, and she will be free of him. He has made it clear that he is not coming back; that he has aged out. But still, she cannot calm herself.
"Of course," he says, drumming his long white fingers along his arm, making her shudder as if they were scraping a blackboard. "I suppose I probably never really leave you… do I?"
She wonders, for the thousandth time, why. Why her. What she ever did to deserve this.
"Isn't that right, Benson?"
His hot breath smells slightly sweet, like mints; she can't stand it. She takes another puff from her cigarette and somehow, it gives her some semblance of strength. Her legs stop shaking so badly, and she stops holding her bony arms so close to herself. She is a child no longer; with everyone else, she is sullen and independent, disobedient and disrespectful. But she has never dared defy him.
"No," she says, quickly, suddenly, surprises herself.
"No?" he says, and his eyebrows arch, his tone a dangerous calm, and she knows she is in trouble; her knees begin to quake and she thinks they might buckle underneath her. "You haven't forgotten, have you, Benson?"
At his words, her lips unbotton, and a single laugh flies out, a short, harsh cackle. How could she forget? How could she ever forgot, what he did to her? The horrible, terrible, unspeakable torment he held her under, with Dennis, in that cave… she's never told a soul, flatly denied that anything happened at all. Sometimes, she wonders if she is even capable of recounting it, even if she could summon the courage.
"Forgotten what?" she says, quelling the laughter, her voice hard and bitter, with an edge of defiance, or sarcasm. "Nothing happened, Riddle. Isn't that right?"
A spasm of pain hits her, suddenly, and she doubles over, unable to breathe, unable to see, thrown back into the darkness of her memories… and then, somehow, reality resurfaces, and he has turned his back upon her once more. He has taught her his lesson and now he has gone.
But for once, she will not let him get away with it. She takes another drag, and the words spring to her lips almost unconsciously. "You'll meet your match someday, Tom Riddle…"
He looks back, and she flicks the end of her cigarette at him. The piece of ash lands at his feet, a tiny orange ember flickering. He raises a hand – probably to strike her – when Mrs. Cole yells, flings open the front door, exclaiming, "Is that cigarette smoke I smell?"
"Yes," he says, so smoothly, as she gasps for air. "I was just telling Amy it's terribly unhealthy for her. But I've got to go now. Goodbye."
Tom Riddle has destroyed her, and her childhood, but somehow, she remains, lean and bony, raggedly dressed, under a torment of Mrs. Cole's vocal abuses, as the ember burns out and he disappears forever.
Amy thinks he might remember her, after all.